CHAPTER VIII. 



Acaleph^ {Sea-blubbers). 



In walking through the crowded thoroughfares of London 

 on a clear winter's evening, we have often admired the 

 beauty of the lamps that illuminate the shops and cast 

 such a flood of radiance on the thronged streets. The 

 elegant forms of the glass shades, the beauty of the 

 material of which they are composed, and the various de- 

 grees of translucency which they are made to assume by 

 the roughness or polish of their surface, in particular, have 

 often attracted our attention ; and we have been inter- 

 ested by tracing their very obvious resemblance to certain 

 living creatures that swim in the vast deep, — creatures 

 which the poet describes as 



" Figured by hand Divine ; there's not a gem 

 Wrought by man's art to be compared to them ; 

 Soft, brilliant, tender, through the wave they glow, 

 And make the moonbeam brighter where they flow."* 



We refer of course to the Medusce. The forms given to 

 our lamp-shades, — spherical, hemispherical, umbrella- 

 like, saucer-like, spheroids either oblate or prolate, and 

 * Crabbe. 



