164 Secrets of the Ocean [FOURTH WEEK 



dared, I would sometimes catch glimpses of these strange 

 beings far below me, passing and repassing in the silence 

 and icy coldness of the watery depths. These large me- 

 dusse are often very abundant after a favourable wind has 

 blown for a few days, and I have rowed through masses of 

 them so thick that it seemed like rowing through thick 

 jelly, two or three feet deep. In an area the length of 

 the boat and about a yard wide, I have counted over one 

 hundred and fifty Aurelias on the surface alone. 



When one of these " sun-fish," as the fishermen call 

 them, is lifted from the water, the clay-coloured eggs may 

 be seen to stream from it in myriads. In many jellies, small 

 bodies the size of a pea are visible in the interior of the 

 mass, and when extracted they prove to be a species of 

 small shrimp. These are well adapted for their quasi- 

 parasitic life, in colour being throughout of the same 

 milky semi-opaqueness as their host, but one very curious 

 thing about them is, that when taken out and placed in 

 some water in a vial or tumbler they begin to turn darker 

 almost immediately, and in five minutes all will be of 

 various shades, from red to a dark brown. 



I had no fear of Aurelia, but when another free-swim- 

 ming species of jelly-fish, Cyanea, or the blue-jelly, ap- 

 peared, I swam ashore with all speed. This great jelly is 

 usually more of a reddish liver-colour than a purple, and 

 is much to be dreaded. Its tentacles are of enormous 

 length. I have seen specimens which measured two feet 

 across the disc, with streamers fully forty feet long, and 

 one has been recorded seven feet across and no less than 

 one hundred and twelve feet to the tip of the cruel ten- 



