Cuvieri. 



vyancea capilldti. 



These symptoms last for ten or twelve hours before they fairly abate, and even aftei 

 several days the very contact of the clothes is painful to the skin. The shooting pangs 

 just mentioned are of longer duration, and I have felt them more than three months after 

 the Cyansea had stung me. 



To the unaided eye the filaments which work such dread misery are most innocuous 

 and feeble, being scarcely stronger than the gossamer floating in the air, and looking much 

 as if the Medusa had broken away a spider's web, and were trailing the long threads 

 behind it. The microscope, however, reveals a wondrous structure, which, though it 

 cannot precisely compensate for the sufferings inflicted by these tentacles, can at all events 

 endow them with au interest which would not otherwise be felt. 



Lest any of my readers should become fellow-sufferers with myself, I advise them to 

 be very careful when bathing after a strong south-west wind has prevailed, and if ever 

 they see a tawny mass of membranes and fibres floating along, to retreat at once, and wait 

 until it is at least a hundred yards away. Some may suppose that this advice is need- 

 lessly timid, but those who have once felt a single poison thread across their hand or foot 

 will recognise that discretion is by far the wisest part to be played whenever there is the 

 least danger of being stung by the Cyanaea. 



THE last family, of which the large upper figure affords an example, is easily known 

 by the absence of a mouth. In the typical genus, Ehizostoma, the footstalk is deeply 

 scooped into semi-lunar orifices, and the eight cartilaginous arms are without fringes. 

 This beautiful genus is also seen on our coasts. 



BEFORE taking a final leave of these remarkable beings, it is needful that we should 

 briefly notice the strange metamorphosis through which some of them pass before they 



