The Wit of the Wild 



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will enable anyone to understand the creature 

 who will lift a physalia from the waves in a 

 bucket and then gently pour it into a glass jar 

 or aquarium of sea water, and so preserve the 

 delicate animal alive, to be examined at leisure. 

 It will not bear touching. 



It will then be observed that the gaudy float 

 sometimes eight inches long and three high 

 is a pear-shaped bladder-like thing, tensely in- 

 flated. It is pinched along its top into a brill- 

 iant crest, and from its lower side, mainly to- 

 ward the larger (front) end, depend a great 

 number of filmy appendages. 



This float is in reality a sac filled with air, 

 which enters it through an opening in the 

 pointed end. The sac, although seeming as 

 thin, and in parts as diaphanous, as a bubble, 

 has a double wall that is, it is one sac inside 

 of another ; and it abounds in muscular fibers, 

 by which the animal can vary its shape, con- 

 tracting the sac at will into creases and open- 

 ing or closing the air door; and the beautiful 

 creature, when young, is able by this means, 

 when rain falls or the winds blow cold, to expel 



