214 THE OCEAN WOELD. 



localities, among the most elegant productions of Nature. We could 

 not better commence our studies of these children of the sea than by 

 quoting a passage from the poet and historian Michelet: "Among 

 the rugged rocks and lagunes, where the retiring sea has left many 

 little animals which were too sluggish or too weak to follow, some 

 shells will be there left to themselves and suffered to become quite dry. 

 In the midst of them, without shell and without shelter, extended at 

 our feet, lies the animal which we call by the very inappropriate name 

 of the Medusa. Why was this name, of terrible associations, given to 

 a creature so charming ? Often have I had my attention arrested by 

 these castaways which we see so often on the shore. They are small, 

 about the size of my hand, but singularly pretty, of soft light shades, 

 of an opal white ; where it lost itself as in a cloud of tentacles a 

 crown of tender lilies the wind had overturned it ; its crown of lilac 

 hair floated about, and the delicate umbel, that is, its proper body, 

 was beneath ; it had touched the rock dashed against it ; it was 

 wounded, torn in its fine locks, which are also its organs of respira- 

 tion, absorption, and even of love The delicious creature, with 



its visible innocence and the iridescence of its soft colours, was left 

 like a gliding, trembling jelly. I paused beside it, nevertheless : I 

 glided my hand under it. raised the motionless body cautiously, and 

 restored it to its natural position for swimming. Putting it into the 

 neighbouring water, it sank to the bottom, giving no sign of life. I 

 pursued my walk along the shore, but at the end of ten minutes I 

 returned to my Medusa. It was undulating under the wind ; really it 

 had moved itself, and was swimming about with singular grace, its 

 hair flying round it as it swam ; gently it retired from the rock, not 

 quickly, but still it went, and I soon saw it a long way off." 



Of all the zoophytes which live in the ocean there is none more 

 numerous in species or more singular in their matter, more odd in 

 their form, or more remarkable in their mode of reproduction, than 

 those to which Linnaeus gave the name of Medusa, from the mythical 

 chief of the Gorgons. 



The seas of every latitude of the globe furnish various tribes of 

 these singular beings. They live in the icy waters which bathe 

 Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Iceland ; they multiply under the fires 

 of the Equator, and the frozen regions of the south nourish nume- 

 rous species. They are, of all animals, those which present the least 



