150 THE OCEAN WORLD, 
creatures are from time to time observed 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.” ae: 
If fishes have the misfortune to come in contact with 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 walnut 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 asseizing 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- 
