150 THE OCEAN WORLD. 



creatures are from time to time obsers^ed on the coasts of Cornwall 

 and Devon. The Portuguese man-of-war is among them, sometimes 

 paying its visit in fleets, more commonly in single stranded hulks. 

 Scarcely a season passes without one or more of these lovely strangers 

 occurring in the vicinity of Torquay. Usually," he adds in a note, 

 "in these stranded examples the tentacles and suckers are much 

 mutilated by washing on the shore. The fishermen who pick them 

 up always endeavour to make a harvest of their capture, not by selling, 

 but by making an exhibition of them." 



The Physalia seem to be gregarious in their habits, herding together 

 in shoals. Floating on the sea between the tropics in both oceans, 

 they may be seen now carried along by currents, now driven by the 

 trade-winds, dragging behind them their long tentacular appendages, 

 and conspicuous by their rich and varied colouring, from pale crimson 

 to ultramarine blue. " Certainly," says Lesson, " we can readily con- 

 ceive that a poetical imagination might well compare the graceful form 

 of the Physalia to the most elegant of sailing-vessels, even if it careened 

 to the wind under a sail of satin, and dragged behind it deceitful 

 garlands which struck with death every creature which suffered itself 

 to be attracted by its seductive appearance." 



If fishes have the misfortune to come in contact wnth one of these 

 creatures, each tentacle, by a movement as rapid as a flash of light, or 

 sudden as an electric shock, seizes and benumbs them, winding round 

 their bodies as a serpent winds itself round its victim. A Physalia 

 of the size of a w-alnut will kill a fish much stronger than a herring. 

 The flying-fish and the cuttle-fish are the habitual prey of the 

 Physalia. Mr. Bennet describes them as seizing and benumbing them 

 by means of the tentacles, which are alternately contracted to half an 

 inch, and then shot out with amazing velocity to the length of several 

 feet, dragging the helpless and entangled prey to the sucker-like mouths 

 and stomach-like cavities concealed among the tentacles, which he 

 saw filled while he looked on. Dr. Wallich thinks Mr. Bennet must 

 have been mistaken in what he saw ; " because he has observed that 

 in a great number of instances the Physalia is accompanied by small 

 fishes which play around and among the depending tentacles without 

 molestation." He has in so many cases seen this, and even witnessed 

 the actual contact of the fishes with the tentacles, with no incon- 

 venience to the former, that he concludes, perhaps too hastily, that 

 the urticating organs are innocuous." " Surely," says Gosse, " the 

 premises by no means warrant such an inference. There is no an- 

 tagonism between the two series of facts witnessed by such excellent 

 observers ; the venomous virulence of these organs has been abun- 



