COMMON OBJECTS OF THE SHORE. 319 



volume of the water. The animals of this genus 

 have a disc more or less convex above, similar 

 to that of a mushroom or umbrella, sometimes 

 deepening into the shape of a bell. The greater 

 number cannot be seen in the day time, for they 

 are clear as crystal, and both by their small size 

 and translucent nature often escape the observa- 

 tion, even when aided by a microscope, till night 

 brings out their sparkling beauties. And why 

 were these and the other tribes of beautiful 

 jelly-fishes created? Were they made merely to 

 gratify our sense of beauty and to give us delight 

 as we gazed upon them ? The beauty of nature, 

 its fitness of pleasing the intellectual taste of man, 

 was evidently deemed by the great Creator of the 

 universe no mean object of his care: but these 

 animals have other purposes, too, to fulfil. When 

 God said, " Let there be light " over all the earth, 

 yet he sent no light from the orbs of heaven, into 

 the depths of the sea. Light rapidly diminishes 

 in its progress through the water, and far away 

 down in the deeps all would be darkness but for 

 this provision of rendering it luminous. Yet there 

 is an inconceivable multitude in that world of life 

 beneath the waters. The fishes, which, like the 

 lion of the forest, seek their prey there, and choose 

 for their hunting time the period when man is 

 sleeping, need these lamps to guide their way. 

 Fishes will follow any luminous object, and the 

 angler knows that the glitter even of a newly 

 tinned hook will be an attraction to the herring 

 amid the waves ; and thus the smaller animals are 

 caught by means of the glitter arising from the 

 newly dead inhabitant of the deep, which ere it 

 has time to become putrescent glitters with light, 



