JELLY FISHES VARIETY AND BEAUTY. 10? 



the dead Velellas putrefied so rapidly and exhaled so 

 abominable an odour that, as their captor remarked, the 

 Velellas and herself were simultaneously threatened with 

 extermination. Two of them she kindly sent to me, and 

 from them and the coloured drawing the above descrip- 

 tion is taken. 



By sailors the Velella is called the Sallyman, this 

 being the nautical equivalent for Sallee-man, the sail of 

 the Velella bearing some resemblance to the lateen sail of 

 the once-famous Sallee Eovers. 



In the creature which now comes before us there is a 

 sail, as in the Velella, but it is supported, not on a flat 

 raft, but on a hollow float distended with air. Being 

 rounded instead of flat, it would be upset by the slightest 

 breeze were it not for the mass of tentacles and other 

 appendages which hang deep in the water. 



Popularly it is called by several names. " Portuguese 

 man-of-war " is perhaps that by which it is best known, 

 but sailors and other voyagers mostly persist in calling it 

 by the name of Nautilus, and thereby puzzling their 

 readers. I need scarcely say that so far from being one 

 of the lowest forms of animal life, the Nautilus is one of 

 the highest next to the vertebrates, that it has no sails, 

 and that it either crawls on the bed of the sea, or pro- 

 jects itself through the water with its siphon-like tube, 

 just as does the octopus, with which every one is now so 

 familiar. 



It has been well described as the most buoyant of 

 animals. The depending tentacles are scarcely heavier 



