PH YSOPHORID&. 135 



represent the colony we have endeavoured to describe, 44 being 

 the nursing individual of Apolemia contorta magnified twelve times, 

 45 representing the reproductive pair under the same magnifying 

 power. 



The Stephanomincz contain several genera, among these the 

 genus Agalma; and there is no animal form more graceful than Agalma 

 r ubra, which is reproduced in PLATE III., from Vogt's Memoir. This 

 beautiful creature is common in the Mediterranean, on the coast near 

 Nice, from November till the month of May. Towards the middle 

 of December Vogt found nearly fifty individuals, in the space of an 

 hour, opposite to the port of Nice, all following the same current 

 a prodigious quantity of Salpae, Medusae, and small pteropodean 

 molluscs accompanying them. 



" I know nothing more graceful," says Vogt, " than this Agalma, as 

 it floats along near the surface of the waters, its long, transparent, 

 garland-like lines extended, and their limits distinctly indicated by 

 bundles of a brilliant vermilion red, while the rest of the body is 

 concealed by its very transparency ; the entire organism always swims 

 in a slightly oblique position near the surface, but is capable of steer- 

 ing itself in any direction with great rapidity. I have had in my 

 possession some of these garlands more than three feet in length, in 

 which the series of swimming bladders measured more than four 

 inches, so that in the great vase in which I kept them the column 

 of swimming bladders touched the bottom, while the aerial vesicle 

 floated on the surface. Immediately after its capture the columns 

 contracted themselves to such a point that they were scarcely per- 

 ceptible, but when left to repose in a spacious vase, all its shrunken 

 appendages deployed themselves round the vase in the most graceful 

 manner imaginable, the column of swimming-bladders remaining im- 

 movable in their vertical position, the float at the surface, while the 

 different appendages soon began to play. The polyps, planted at 

 intervals along the common trunk, of rose-colour, began to agitate 

 themselves in all directions, taking a thousand odd forms ; the repro- 

 ductive individuals, like the tentacles, were contracting and twisting 

 about like so many worms ; the tentacles were stirred, the ovarian 

 clusters began to dilate and contract, the spasmodic swimming- 

 bladders agitated the waters with their umbrellas, like the Medusae ; 

 but what most excited my curiosity, was the continuous action of the 

 fishing-lines, which continued to unroll and contract in a most surpris- 

 ing manner, re-tiring altogether sometimes with the utmost precipitation. 

 All who have witnessed these living colonies, withdraw themselves 

 reluctantly from the strange spectacle, where each polyp seems to 



