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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



next the water. Once we dipped one in a net, and placing it care- 

 fully in a pail of sea-water, examined it at our leisure on deck. 

 It was then seen to consist of a float or air bag, and thick clusters 

 of pink bodies attached, and longer blue ones which extend down 

 in the water. 



Our little man-of-war bears a truer resemblance to a well 

 manned and ordered warship than might at first be supposed, 

 since it is not an individual, but a community of polyp-like ani- 



FIG. 6. ANTHNNARICS. 



mals bound together for common support and protection, with a 

 division of labor recalling that maintained aboard a vessel, or, 

 better still, like that seen in a hive of bees. There are four kinds 

 or grades of persons in the physalia community. There are the 

 feeders, the pink bodies just mentioned, which procure and di- 

 gest the food for the whole community, all the polyps communi- 

 cating freely with each other ; the defenders, the long, indigo-col- 

 ored tentacles, which may be distended like flexible threads to the 



