7O PENIKESE. 



it closely perhaps touch it with our hands. It 

 stings us with an electric stroke that makes us feel as 

 if our whole hand had become suddenly alive with a 

 fiery infusion of nettle, which remains for nearly half 

 an hour. The bubble itself, to this wonderful, com- 

 posite animal, is four to six inches in length and 

 some three wide and high in its centre. The bunch 

 of living polyps beneath, twice that size; while the 

 ravellings, for such they seem to be, hang downwards 

 to from twelve to eighteen inches below the clustered 

 mass above, Now this assemblage of living individ- 

 uals must be studied separately from the bubble, as 

 we will still call it. Investigation proves that this is 

 not a single individual, as would at first appear, but 

 a colony of innumerable zooids, carrying above them, 

 a huge wind bladder apparently, only to sustain 

 them just below the surface of the water. The true 

 home of this living, floating island is in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. It must, therefore, only casually drift so 

 far north as its present limit which is rarely beyond 

 Cape Cod. Three specimens, only, were found dur- 

 ing our stay at Penikese, of which, I believe, I alone 

 was the fortunate possessor of the only live one. It 

 was found stranded upon the beach, one morning 

 after a severe storm, in a nearly perished condition. 

 How it survived the storm, the rocks and sand of 

 the beach, and the amount of handling which it un- 

 derwent in being transferred to a pail or fresh sea 

 water, thence to my aquarium, I cannot well under- 

 stand; yet it lived, and threw off a whole tank full of 

 young, which went paddling around everywhere, of 

 their own free will, "as happy as clams at high 

 water." 



This is only one of the many things which occupy 

 our attention. Nearly every aquarium presents some- 

 thing of interest to study, and every moment of our 

 time is fully occupied. Among the animals in some 

 of the other aquariums are: both species of our com- 

 mon stickleback, the sea mullet, several kinds of peri- 

 winkles, and both the large and the small hermit 



