ITS VORACITY. 89 



foremost, whether the direction of the movement be 

 vertical, horizontal, or as is most commonly the case 

 oblique ; and the tentacles, and the long white probos- 

 cis drag behind in trailing lines. Now and anon, the 

 shooting is suddenly suspended, the bell hangs over 

 and remains awhile motionless, the tentacles are allow- 

 ed to depend like spiders' webs, or are suddenly drawn 

 up into shrivelled puckers, become mutually entangled 

 and intertwisted, then slowly free themselves and hang 

 down again. Sometimes the motionless bell itself 

 sinks very gradually, and the tentacle-threads take the 

 most elegant curves and arches in their descent. 



The Sarsia is voracious, and the long and flexible 

 peduncle is not only the stomach which digests the 

 prey, but the hand which stretches forth to seek and 

 to grasp it. I put into the bottle containing several 

 the minute green-eyed fry of some fish, newly hatched, 

 about half-an-inch in length. In a very few minutes 

 I saw that a Sarsia had caught the little fish, which 

 was seized and partly swallowed by the clubbed extre- 

 mity of the peduncle. For hours afterwards the prey 

 was visible, though more and more engulphed ; the 

 large head and prominent green eyes of the victim 

 being very conspicuous.* 



* Professor Agassiz, with whose masterly tract on a closely allied 

 species, I was not at this time acquainted, states that Sarsia mirabiUs, 

 with all the small Naked-eyed Medusae of the North American coasts, 

 disappears about the middle of summer, being kUled by the heavy rains 

 of that season. (Mem. Amer. Acad. ir. 228.) If I were to judge only 

 by my Weymouth experience, I should say our Naked-eyed Medusse 

 conformed to the same rule; as, though I searched often in various situa- 

 tions, I scarcely obtained an individual of any species after the date 

 above mentioned. Yet, in the Bristol Channel, many kinds, from the 



