374 THE RED-LINED CHRYSAORA. 



riably accompanied by their protrusion, and the 

 shrinking up of the umbrella ; and in the case of this 

 Chrysaora, I found the ovaries assuming a greater 

 size and opacity. They formed frill-like expansions 

 spread around the interior of the four stomachal cham- 

 bers, and now began to protrude from the oval 

 apertures in convoluted masses. A portion of one of 

 the protruding masses I cut off with fine scissors, 

 and submitted it to a magnifying power of 220 

 diameters. 



The mass consisted of a plexus of gelatinous tubes, 

 very numerous, not a single one many times convolu- 

 ted, for the rounded and closed ends of many were 

 traceable, though I could not follow any one to its 

 other extremity, except where cut off by the scissors. 

 They moved and twisted about, gliding along like so 

 many worms, by means of the cilia with which their 

 surface was clothed. I could not indeed see the cilia 

 themselves, but the uniform currents that swept the 

 floating atoms along left no doubt on this point. The 

 diameter of the tubes was not equal, but varied from — 

 to -^ inch ; and their w^alls were rather thick. In 

 the mass were scattered a great number of globose 

 ova, of granular texture, and yellowish-brown hue ; 

 the most mature of wdiich were about -px inch in dia- 

 meter, but others were much smaller, and pellucid in 

 the ratio of their immaturity. None appeared to have 

 a clear nucleus. Some of the ova w^re certainly 

 within the tubes, and though the greater part appeared 

 to lie free among the convoluted mass, and a few 

 wTre Joose in the water, I am inclined to attribute 

 this entirely to the tubes having been cut across by 



