MEDUSAE THEIR UNFITNESS FOR MANURE. 61 



matter which enters into their composition. On one 

 occasion we took a dead specimen, and placing it on a 

 piece of glass, exposed it to the sun. As the moisture 

 evaporated, the different parts appeared as if confusedly 

 painted on the glass; and when it was become perfectly 

 dry, a touch removed the only vestiges of what had 

 been so lately a graceful and animated being. 



" We learned from an eminent naturalist (Professor 

 E. Forbes), that a few years ago he had been delivering 

 some zoological lectures in a seaport-town in Scotland, 

 in the course of which he had alluded to some of the 

 most remarkable points in the oeconomy of the Aca- 

 lephse. After the lecture, a farmer who had been 

 present came forward, and inquired if he had under- 

 stood him correctly as having stated that the Medusae 

 contained so little of solid material, that they might 

 be regarded as little else than a mass of animated 

 sea- water? On being answered in the affirmative, 

 he remarked that it would have saved him many a 

 pound had he known that sooner, for he had been 

 in the habit of employing his men and horses in 

 carting away large quantities of jelly-fishes from the 

 shore and using them, as manure on his farm, and he 

 now believed they could have been of little more real 

 use than an equal weight of sea- water. Assuming 

 that so much as a ton-weight of Medusae, recently 

 thrown upon the beach, had been carted away in one 

 load, it will be found that the entire quantity of solid 

 material would be only about four pounds avoirdupois 

 weight, which, if compressed, the farmer might very 

 easily have carried home in one of his coat-pockets." 



Some of the Acalephae are stated to attain a very 



