STOMOBRACHIUM OCTOCOSTATUM. 31 



During the month of July 1839, when cruising with Mr. Smith in the Kyles of Bute, we 

 met with numbers of a little Medusa identical with those figured by Sars and Ehrenberg, and 

 afterwards found it equally common in the bays of the north-west coast of Ireland. 



The umbrella is very convex and campanulate, transparent, and smooth. The sub- 

 umbrella is large, and truncated at the summit. Round the margin of the umbrella is a thick 

 fringe of fine, very extensile, tentacula (40 — 60, according to Sars ; if the former number, the 

 formula might probably be 8X4+8). Between each of these Ehrenberg represents a very 

 small tentacle, which is borne upwards or obliquely when the larger ones are extended, and he 

 also figures a vesicle (otolitic ?) at the origin of each of the small tentacula. Down the 

 sub-umbrella run eight simple vessels, and in the course of each is a conspicuous linear 

 furbelowed ovary or reproductive gland. The ovary and the tentacles are of a golden yellow 

 colour. The peduncle is also yellow, short, but broad, and is suspended from the centre of the 

 sub-umbrella ; it is occupied by the stomach, and terminates in four fimbriated lobes or lips, 

 which change their forms so as sometimes to appear as if eight in number. 



This account of a beautiful and probably not rare species is evidently insufl&cient, though 

 enough for its recognition, and I hope on some future opportunity to observe it more completely. 

 Of its aspect and habits in confinement, a graphic account has been given by ray friend the 

 Rev. David Landsborough, in his delightful volume on the Island of Arran, not the less 

 graphic for proceeding in part from the pen of Hugh Miller, who could not fail to present a 

 vivid picture of this animated and beautiful bubble, after having endowed the fragmentary and 

 motionless remains of fossil fishes with such vitality, that no reader of his admirable ' Old Red 

 Sandstone' rises from its perusal, without the fond impression of having seen in his mind's 

 eye the Pterichthys and Coccosteus, and their strange companions of the deep, not as shapeless 

 lumps of rock, ranged in orderly rows under sheet-glass, but as living monsters sporting in a 

 primaeval sea. 



" There was a Medusa," writes Mr. Landsborough, " discovered by my son David, which 

 was quite new to us, and, from its minuteness, probably known to few. We took it home, and 

 put it in a tumbler of sea-water, that we might better observe its structure and graceful 

 evolutions. I would have attempted to describe it, but glad was I, soon after we had seen it, 

 to find this done to my hand by one who is acknowledged in the scientific world as a graphic 

 describer of nature — Mr. Hugh Miller ; best known among men of science as the author of 

 the truly interesting work on the ' Old Red Sandstone,' but better known to our countrymen 

 in general as the talented Editor of the ' Witness.' Nothing escapes his scientific eye ; and 

 from his ' Summer Rambles,' I learned that he had about the same time discovered it, when 

 aboard the Betsy, off the Island of Eigg. He speaks of two — one scarcely larger than a 

 shilling, ^another still more minute,' (ours, I think, about the breadth of a sixpence), 'and 

 which presenting in the water the appearance of a small hazel nut of a brown-yellowish hue, 

 I was disposed,' says he, ' to set down as a species of Beroe. On getting one caught, how- 

 ever, and transferred to a bowl, I found that the brown-coloured, melon-shaped mass, though 

 ribbed like a Beroe, did not present the true outline of the animal ; it formed merely the 

 centre of a gelatinous bulb, which, though scarcely visible even in the bowl, proved a most 

 effective instrument of motion. Such were its contractile powers, that its sides nearly closed 

 at every stroke behind the opaque centre, like the legs of a vigorous swimmer ; and the 

 animal— unlike its more bulky congeners, that, despite of their slow persevering flappings. 



