1889.] Days and Nights by the Sea. 407 
sea. The young of these and of a hundred other forms swarm 
in the surface water on still evenings, in countless myriads, the 
most delicate creatures, many of them as transparent as glass, 
and so small that it requires a microscope to see them. After 
passing through metamorphoses more wonderful than any 
described in the tales of Ovid, the remnant of this host which 
nature allows to live, takes on adult characters. The young 
crab or prawn after having gone by several aliases, and 
played as many distinct roles, sheds it skin once more, sinks 
to the bottom and except in point of size is indistinguishable 
from an adult. One would hardly have guessed that a larva 
like that of the mollusc with its enormous locomotory sails, 
and its delicate fringes of cilia, would ever develop into a se- 
dentary slow-moving gastropod, or that the grotesque micro- 
scopic larva, shaped like a painter's easel, would ever turn into 
into a symmetrical starfish with its five horizontal rays. 
If one spends a few hours in the gulf stream on a calm day 
or night, he cannot fail to be impressed by that vast stratum of 
living beings, which this great ocean current bears hourly upon 
Its bosom. Once when off our southern coast, we sailed 
through a school of medusa; which must have covered many 
square miles of ocean. They were little brown bells, the size 
of thimbles, and the indigo water was peppered with them. 
We encountered them at about four o'clock in the afternoon 
and for more than an hour their numbers did not sensibly 
diminish. But at night the dark waters glow with the phos- 
phorescence of those minute and obscure beings whose pres- 
ence one would not suspect by day unless he had microscopic 
eyes. Through every mile that the ship ploughs her way, her 
bow encounters a steady stream of shooting stars. Every 
movement in this living water precipitates a shower of sparks, 
and every spark is due to an organism. There are stars of 
the first magnitude, like the large medusae glowing like red- 
hot cannon balls, besides a whole galaxy of lesser lights. 
Much of the time of a naturalist at the seaside is spent in 
the collection and study of these pelagic larvae and the adult 
forms which they represent. A calm summer's evening when 
