80 



LIFE, fN ITS LOWER FORMS, 



phorescent light. Thaumantias pilosella, occasionally so 

 abundant on our western shores, is a hemisphere of 



hyaline jelly, as large 

 as a shilling, the edge 

 of which is studded 

 -with black or rather 

 dark purple eye- 

 specks. If we irri- 

 tate one of these 

 creatures in the 

 dark, by touching it 

 ■with a stick, for in- 

 Tiiatimantiaspiloseiia-<77ic^?iij?€d) stance, instantly a 

 circle of bright tiny lamps is lighted up, every eye-speck 

 becoming a spark, like a coronet of glittering diamonds, 

 or like a circular figure of gas-jets, lighted at a public 

 illumination, and seen from a distance ; more especially 

 as some of the constituent sparks appear to go out and 

 revive again, just as do the gas-flames if the night be 

 windy. And the beautiful JEquorea Forbesiana, a flat 

 species resembling in form and size a cake or bun, on 

 being disturbed gives out its light in a marginal ring, 

 which suddenly becomes vividly luminous, like those 

 circles of glory with which the Italian painters delight to 

 crowm their saints and sacred personages. 



But these examples yield to some of those that swim at 

 large in the boundless ocean ; where the mariner, in his 

 lonely watch, occasionally sees, far below the keel of his 

 ship, what look like swimming globes of fire, or cannon- 

 balls heated to incandescence : these are believed to bo 

 some globose species of Medusse of large dimensions. 



