234 PORTUGUESE MAN-OF-WAR. 



informs me that he has attempted to reduce them to 

 isinglass, by boiling, but that they appear to be quite 

 worthless in a commercial point of view. 



The Physalia, or " Portuguese man-of-war ", is very 

 delicately tinted, sometimes white and pink, and some- 

 times of a lovely lilac, with a pale crimson crest. Byron 

 has termed the Nautilus ' the Ocean Mab, the Fairy of 

 the Sea"; modern science has, however, dispelled the 

 poetic illusion of " oars and aerial sails ", and altered its 

 mode of progression altogether. The phrase of the poet 

 will more particularly apply to the above-mentioned 

 Acalepha, which rears its fragile crest above the waves in 

 the calm regions of the tropics, and allows the gentle 

 breeze to waft it on its course.* 



Among the numerous varieties of Physalia pelagica 

 found by us floating on the surface of the Indian Ocean, 

 was one taken in trawl, of a form so peculiar, and of a 

 colour so distinct, as to warrant its being called by a 

 different specific name, although the form of the bladder 

 alone is not sufficient to characterize these animals. The 

 body of this specimen was of a delicate transparent blue, 

 and the crest, twisted slightly on itself, was lilac, blending 



been wafted thither, unable to strike its characteristic lateen sail. 

 There also I have seen wrecked a fleet of the Portuguese men-of-war 

 (Physalia), which had been buoyed by their air-bladders to that iron- 

 bound coast." 



* I observe by his Hunterian Lectures that the same idea occurred 

 to the mind of Professor Owen. Alluding to Velella, he says, " one 

 of the genera, Felella, has a process of the firm internal skeleton, 

 arising from the upper surface of the body-disc, to which it is set at 

 the same angle as the lateen-sail of the Malay coast ; it is wafted 

 along by the action of the wind upon this process, and may have been 

 mistaken for the fabled Cephalopodic paper-sailor (Argonauta)." 



