MEDUSID&. 159 
neighbouring water, it sank to the bottom, giving no sign of life. I 
pursued my walk along the shore, but at the end of ten minutes I 
returned to my Medusa. It was undulating under the wind; it had 
really moved itself, and was swimming about with singular grace, its 
hair flying round it as it swam; gently it retired from the rock, not 
quickly, but still it went, and I soon saw it a long way off.” 
Of all the forms which live in the ocean there are none more 
numerous in species or more singular in their structure, more odd 
in their form, or more remarkable in their mode of reproduction, 
than those to which Linnzeus gave the name of Medusa, from the 
mythical chief of the Gorgons. 
The seas of every latitude of the globe furnish various tribes of 
these singular beings. They live in the icy waters which bathe 
Spitzbergen, Greenland, and Iceland; they multiply under the fires 
of the Equator, and the frozen regions of the South nourish 
numerous species. They are, of all animals, those which present the 
least solid substance. Their bodies are little else than water, which 
is scarcely retained by an imperceptible organic network ; their 
bodies are a transparent jelly, almost without consistence. “It is a 
true sea-water jelly,” says Réaumur, writing in 1701 of a Medusa, 
“having little colour or consistence. If we take a morsel in our 
hands, the natural heat is sufficient to dissolve it into water.” 
Spallanzani could only obtain five or six grains from the pellicle 
of a Medusa weighing fifty ounces. From certain specimens weighing 
from ten to twelve pounds, only six to seven pennyweights could be 
obtained of solid matter, according to Frédol. ‘Mr. Telfair saw an 
. enormous Medusa (?) which had been abandoned on the beach at 
Bombay ; three days after, the animal began to putrefy. To satisfy 
his curiosity, he got the neighbouring boatmen to keep an eye upon 
it, in order to gather the bones and cartilages belonging to the great 
creature, if by chance it had any ; butits decomposition was so rapid 
and complete that it left no remains, although it required nine months: 
to dissipate it entirely.” 
“Floating on the bosom of the waters,” says Frédol, “the 
Medusa resembles a bell, an umbrella, or, better still, a floating 
mushroom, the stalk of which has been here separated into lobes 
more or less divergent, sinuous, twisted, shrivelled, fringed, the edges 
of the cap being delicately cut, and provided with long thread-like 
appendages, which descend vertically into the water like the drooping 
branches of the weeping willow.” 
The gelatinous substance of which the body of the Medusa is 
formed is sometimes as colourless and limpid as crystal; sometimes 
