SEA-BUTTERFLIES. 315 



far off. There ! you have a handsome one, of the largest kind/' 

 He handed me a glass, with which he had dipped some out of the 

 water. 



I am quite proud of young Joacchino. He has eyes like a 

 lynx, and has learned that the more delicate animals must not be 

 touched with a net, but must be let run in with the water into a 

 glass held out to receive them. In deep water the net must be 

 handled so as to cause an eddy by the side of the animal that 

 shall draw it along on the surface. 



" Bravo, Joacchino ! " I said, after examining the animal in the 

 glass. "I know now what you know about butterflies." The 

 animals which have been named Pteropoda, or wing-footed, really 

 deserve the name. They are excitable creatures, that fly round 

 in the broad glass, often strike the walls in their vehement move- 

 ments, then suddenly draw in their wings, turn downward, and 

 slowly sink to the bottom, to spring up again after a time and 

 begin the old play anew. I recognized at once the boat-butterfly, 

 dedicated to the famous seaman Peron, the Cymbulia peroni 

 (Fig. 1). A little way off, one sees merely the eddy in the water 



Fig. 1.— Ctmbitlia peroni. 



and a brownish kernel about the size of a grain of wheat ; only 

 on a closer inspection can we distinguish two large, roundish 

 wings, as clear as glass, that sit upon a yellowish body drawn 

 backward in length, that rests in a crystal boat, the contour of 

 which can not be exactly discerned, because the substance of 

 which it is formed has the same refractive power as water. It is 

 only when the animal is put, hardly covered with water, in a flat 

 saucer of glass, against a black ground, that we can see the figure 



