A Tiny Man-o'-War 



r 



Now, this exquisite gem of the ocean appar- 

 ently a creature of foam and sunlight, a flower 

 blushing in the desert of the mighty deep- is 

 not only a living and possibly sentient animal, 

 but a most curious and complicated community 

 or family: a ship and crew in one, needing no 

 commander, working always in harmony, voy- 

 aging ever, and, like a privateer, protecting 

 its radiant structure and gathering supplies 

 as it goes. Nobody knows who gave it the 

 name " man-o'-war," nor whether he understood 

 the truth, but it was a happy thought. In 

 classification it ranks as a free-swimming com- 

 pound hydrozoan of the order Siphonophora, 

 a group intermediate between jelly-fishes and 

 polyps. The genus is Physalia, and our 

 wanderer Physalia pelagica. It consists of a 

 unison of four parts, or kinds of parts, which 

 some naturalists regard as separate classes of 

 united individuals (or "persons"), and others 

 as the organs or appendages of a single ani- 

 mal. The reasons why the latter seems the 

 better view are too technical for statement 

 here, but a plain account may be given which 



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