94 SSA WORMS. 



entirely to the procuring of food. They often float without 

 any apparent animation, trusting in the winds and waves to 

 waft them about, and to carry them their food ; some keep 

 a little beneath the surface, and propel themselves by con- 

 tracting their pellucid disks. They have been termed the 

 *' living jellies of the deep," and some are endowed with an 

 acrid secretion, which irritates the skin, and has thus caused 

 them to be termed sea-nettles, 



" Those living jellies which the flesh inflame, 

 Fierce as a nettle, and from that the name; 

 Some in huge masses, some that you may bring 

 In the small compass of a lady's ring. 



Figured by hand Divine — there's not a gem 

 Wrought by man's art to be compared to them; 

 Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow. 

 And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow.'* 



There is one large species common in the Straits of Singa- 

 pore dreaded by the Malays on account of the violence of 

 this power. 



Sometimes these animals are colorless, and as transparent 

 as crystal; others are embellished with the most brilliant 

 hues, and seem as if adorned with the richest enamel. Ste- 

 vens, one of the first voyagers to the East Indies, describes 

 the jelly-fish he saw in the Gulf of Guinea as " a thing swim- 

 ming on the water, like a cock's comb, but the color much 

 fairer, which comb standeth upon a thing almost like the 

 swimmer of a fish in color and bigness." 



Another curious and widely-distributed class of marine 

 animals are the Annelides or Sea- Worrns, the bodies being 

 composed of rings and joints. Some species are only met 

 with in the high seas, swimming freely, while most of the 

 others are to be found on the sea-shore, burrowing in the 

 sand or mud, or living under stones, or amidst seaweed. A 

 few construct a sheath or case for themselves, in which they 



