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THE SEA. 



anemones making their appearance at the mouth of the parent anemone, having just escaped 

 from the general cavity out into the alimentary cavity of its body." 



The class Hydrozoa includes seven orders, first and principally of which let us speak 

 of the Medusa?, of which the ordinary " jelly-fish " is a familiar example. This great 

 order (Medusidai) is characterised by having a disc, more or less convex above, resembling 



a mushroom or expanded umbrella, the edges of the umbrella, as well as the mouth and 

 suckers, commonly having tentacula, or feelers, and cilia. Taken from the sea, a Medusa 

 weighing fifty ounces will rapidly dissolve away to a few grains of solid matter. These 

 floating umbrellas or mushrooms, as they might be termed, are of many forms, but they 

 are all to be counted among the most beautiful works of the Creator. Sometimes the 

 animal is transparent as crystal, sometimes opaline, now of a delicate rose or azure-blue 

 colour, now yellow, now violet, and now, again, reflecting the prismatic colours. " The 



