PHYSOPHORID A. 135 
represent the colony we have endeavoured to describe, 44 being 
the nursing individual of Apolemia contorta magnified twelve times. 
45 representing the reproductive pair under the same magnifying 
power. 
The Stephanomine contain several genera, among these the 
genus 4ga/ma, and there is no animal form more graceful than Agalma 
rubra, which is reproduced in Piate III., from Vogt’s Memoir. This 
beautiful creature is common in the Mediterranean, on the coast near 
Nice, from November till the month of May. Towards the middle 
of December Vogt found nearly fifty individuals, in the space of an 
hour, opposite to the port of Nice, all following the same current— 
a prodigious quantity of Salpe, Meduse, and small pteropodean 
molluscs accompanying them. 
“T know nothing more graceful,” says Vogt, “ than this Agalma, as 
it floats along near the surface of the waters, its long, transparent, 
garland-like lines extended, and their limits distinctly indicated by 
-bundles of a brilliant vermilion red, while the rest of the body is 
concealed by its very transparency ; the entire organism always swims 
in a slightly oblique position near the surface, but is capable of steer- 
ing itself in any direction with great rapidity. I have had in my 
possession some of these garlands more than three feet in length, in 
which the series of swimming bladders measured more than four 
inches, so that in the great vase in which I kept them the column 
of swimming bladders touched the bottom, while the aérial vesicle 
floated on the surface. Immediately after its capture the columns 
contracted themselves to such a point that they were scarcely per- 
ceptible, but when left to repose in a spacious vase, all its shrunken 
appendages deployed themselves round the vase in the most graceful 
manner imaginable, the column of swimming-bladders remaining im- 
movable in their vertical position, the float at the surface, while the 
different appendages soon began to play. The polyps, planted at 
intervals along the common trunk, of rose-colour, began to agitate 
themselves in all directions, taking a thousand odd forms; the repro- 
ductive individuals, like the tentacles, were contracting and twisting 
about like so many worms; the tentacles were stirred, the ovarian 
clusters began to dilate and contract, the spasmodic swimming- 
bladders agitated the waters with their umbrellas, like the Meduse ; 
lbut what most excited my curiosity, was the continuous action of the 
fishing-lines, which continued to unroll and contract in a most surpris- 
ing manner, retiring altogether sometimes with the utmost precipitation. 
All who have witnessed these living colonies, withdraw themselves 
reluctantly from the strange spectacle, where each polyp seems to 
