‘128 THE OCEAN WORLD. 
Another species having a great resemblance to the Praya is 
Galeolaria aurantiaca, or orange Galeolaria, which is represented 
on the opposite plate (Plate II.), borrowed from the fine 
““Memoir of the Inferior Animals of the Mediterranean,” by Carl 
Vogt. Here we find only two great floating bladders placed at each 
extremity of a common stem, and serving the purpose of a locomo- 
tive apparatus to the whole colony. This stem carries in like 
manner polyps placed at regular intervals forming isolated groups, 
provided each with its protecting bracts. But there is no special 
swimming apparatus for each of these groups. Moreover, each 
colony is either male or female. 
PHYSOPHORIDZ. 
These inhabitants of the deep are graceful in form, and are 
distinguished by their delicate tissues and brilliant colours. Essentially 
swimmers, supported by one or many vessels filled with air—having 
also, as in the previous Order, mostly true-swimming-bladders, more 
or less numerous, and of variable form—they float upon the waves, 
remaining on the surface whatever may be the state of the sea. 
They are natural skiffs, and almost incapable of immersion. The 
Physophoride form several families, the principal of which are the 
Apolemiane (Fig. 43), the Stephanoming (PiateE IIL, p. 134), PAysu- 
phorine (Fig. 46), Physaling (Fig. 49), and Velediing (Figs. 50, 51). 
The Apolemine contains but a single genus, Afolemia. The pretty 
A. contorta of Milne-Edwards (Fig. 43), inhabits the Mediterranean, 
and particularly the coast of Nice. This elegant species is often met 
with in the Gulf of Villafranca, near Nice, and has been figured and 
described by Milne-Edwards, Charles Vogt, and also by M. de Quatre- 
- fages, who asks the reader “to figure to himself an axis of flexible 
crystals, sometimes more than a métre (forty inches) in length, all 
round which are attached, by means of long peduncles or footstalks 
equally transparent, some hundreds of bodies, sometimes elongated, 
sometimes flat, and formed like the bud of a flower. If we add to 
this garland of pearls of a vivid red colour an infinity of fine filaments, 
varying in thickness, and giving life and motion to all these parts, we 
have even now only a very slight and imperfect idea of this marvellous 
organism.” The swimming-bells in Afolemia contorta consist of a 
mass having the form of an elongated egg cut in the middle. They 
are arranged in a vertical series of twelves, and the axis which 
supports them is terminated by the aérial vesicle or float. This 
axis is always arranged in a spiral form, even in its greatest expansion, 
