ACALEPH.E. 253 



guese man-of-war is among them, sometimes paying its visit in fleets, 

 more commonly in single stranded hulks. Scarcely a season passes 

 without one or more of these lovely strangers occurring in the vicinity 

 of Torquay. Usually," he adds in a note, " in these stranded examples 

 the tentacles and suckers are much mutilated by washing on the shore. 

 The fishermen who pick them up always endeavour to make a harvest 

 of their capture, not by selling, but by making an exhibition of them." 



The Physalia seem to be gregarious in their habits, herding together 

 in shoals. Floating on the sea between the tropics in both oceans, 

 they may be seen now carried along by currents, now driven by the 

 trade-winds, dragging behind them their long tentacular appendages, 

 and conspicuous by their rich and varied colouring, from pale crimson 

 to ultramarine blue. "Certainly," says Lesson, "we can readily 

 conceive that a poetical imagination might well compare the graceful 

 form of the Physalia to the most elegant of sailing-vessels, even if it 

 careened to the wind under a sail of satin, and dragged behind it de- 

 ceitful garlands which struck with death every creature which suffered 

 itself to be attracted by its seductive appearance." 



If fishes have the misfortune to come in contact with one of these 

 creatures, each tentacle, by a movement as rapid as a flash of light, 

 or sudden as an electric shock, seizes and benumbs them, winding round 

 their bodies as a serpent winds itself round its victim. A Physalia of 

 the size of a walnut will kill a fish much stronger than a herring. The 

 flying fish and the polyps are the habitual prey of the Physalia. 

 Mr. Bennett describes them as seizing and benumbing them by means 

 of the tentacles, which are alternately contracted to half an inch, and 

 then shot out with amazing velocity to the length of several feet, drag- 

 ging the helpless and entangled prey to the sucker-like mouths and 

 stomach-like cavities concealed among the tentacles, which he saw 

 filled while he looked on. Dr. Wallach thinks Mr. Bennett must have 

 been mistaken in what he saw ; " because he has observed that in a 

 great number of instances the Physalia is accompanied by small fishes, 

 which play around and among the depending tentacles without moles- 

 tation. He has in so many cases seen this, and even witnessed the 

 actual contact of the fishes with the tentacles, with no inconvenience to 

 the former, that he too hastily concludes that the urticating organs 

 are innocuous." " Surely," says Gosse, " the premises by no means 

 warrant such an inference. There is no antagonism between the two 



