168 



NATURAL SCIENCE NEWS. 



PENIKESE — A Reminiscence. 



By One of its Pupils. 



Copyright secured 189f. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Second Year at Penikese; Laboratory Work, 

 More Lectures, Familiar Daily Scenes, 

 Recollections of Agassiz, .Theodore 

 Lyman on Fish Culture. 

 Just one week upon the island, and though we have 

 had plenty to do the time has passed quickly and 

 pleasantly enough. There are, of course, a variety 

 of employments, and no one is confined exclusively 

 to any one thing all the time. You will see some in 

 the laboratory busily employed in the dissection of 

 fishes or other animals. They carefully trace, from 

 origin to terminus, each organ — however minute — 

 and accurately determine its relation to the other 

 organs and to the surrounding parts of the animals. 

 Then the nerve systems are followed through their 

 various courses to their seat, the brain, which is laid 

 open and shown in all its perfectness. Finally, the 

 veinous and arterial blood systems, injected (to show 

 their finer terminal portions) or not, followed with 

 slowness and with the utmost precision, teach the 

 student lessons which they can never forget. On 

 shelves, in our laboratory, will be found carefully se- 

 lected and prepared specimens of these dissections, 

 and the digestive organs of various species, all neatly 

 tied and snspended in alcohol. Only one week upon 

 the island yet we have laid out work enough for a 

 year's hard labor already, — but we came here to 

 work! 



Others you will find at work upon some minute, 

 and often microscopic, dissections of the common 

 clam or mussel. Here our injections do a most 

 beautiful work. Different coloring materials are 

 mixed with gelatine, and, while yet warm and in a 

 liquid state, are introduced into every vein and art- 

 ery, while every fibre responds; then the whole cools 

 with a hard, fast color. / 



Still others are busy over beautiful sea mosses, and 

 the minute and delicate polyzoa and protozoa with 

 which they abound. Professor Bicknell has a class 

 in microscopy, and Mr. Alexander Agassiz will, as 

 soon as his health permits, give instruction about sea 

 animals, such as the medusae, starfishes, sea urchins, 

 jelly fishes, etc., and also in embryology. 



The aquariums are not all as yet in full running or- 

 der, — though many of them are already well-filled 

 with sand, stones, sea-weeds, and a goodly number 

 of specimens that are especially adapted to live and 

 thrive in such confined quarters, and represent quite 

 fairly the animal life of the surrounding waters. 



One of our students has recently secured and placed 

 in his tank, one of those most beautiful, delicate, and 

 altogether wonderful little animals, so rare upon our 

 coast, the physalia — often called the Portugese Man- 

 of-war, or the Physalia arethusa of the scientist. It 

 is an exquisite little beauty — a dainty, fragile gem — 

 and belongs to the class of Acalcpha or Jelly Fishes, 

 of the order Hydroidea or Hydroids, which are also 

 known by the name of polyps, from two Greek words 

 signifying "many-fooled", referring to the tentacles; 

 which were, doubtless, in olden times supposed to be 

 feet, — and, apparently, not without reason, since 

 tentacle is from a Latin word signifying "a feeler," — 

 and many of these lowest forms of animal life have 

 no feet but their feelers which must thus have orig- 

 inally been supposed to be feet, both from their shape 



and from their appearance. One little animal, there- 

 fore, has quite a history of its own. Of late years, 

 scientists, who delight in changes and lengthy names, 

 have classed it as: Branch III (of the animal king- 

 don), Coelentcrata; Class I, Hydrozoa; Order III, 

 Siphonophora; Genus, Pliysalia; Species, Arethusa. 

 Now these long names are apparently meaningless to 

 the majority of mankind, but as we have no specimen 

 before us, let us try, through the medium of the 

 "dead languages," a little induction a posteriori, and 

 discover, if we can, what our specimen is really like. 

 So we procure the Greek and Latin lexicons, and be- 

 gin our work. With a little difficulty, we find that 

 our first hard name, ccelenterata, is derived from two 

 Greek words, {Jzoilos and enteron) signifying "hollow- 

 entrailed;" this then lets us into the characteristics of 

 the animals of the branch — that is, their internal or- 

 gans are, in a great measure almost wholly wanting, 

 or, if present, of so simple a nature as to perform the 

 functions of digestion by means of a bag-like stom- 

 ach which digests principally by assimilation. Our 

 next word, hydrozoa, is quickly found; the "hydra" or 

 famous many-headed monster, or serpent slain by 

 Herclues, standing for the first part of the word; and 

 "zoon" (or zoon as it is often written), the Greek 

 word for an animal — this gives us the key to our class 

 characteristics. The third word, siphonophora, is still 

 more plain, being derived from almost identical Greek 

 words signifying a "tube" or "siphon," and "I bear" 

 or "bearing." The word pliysalia comes from a 

 Greek word, also very similar, which signifies "a 

 bubble." Arethusa was the name of a beautiful 

 nymph of Diana's: she was afterward changed into a 

 fountain. 



At first sight, the Portugese Man-of-War would put 

 one in mind, as the name suggests, of an immense 

 oblong, somewhat egg-shaped, bubble of air, with a 

 crest of wavey, wrinkled crenules, much thicker than 

 the surrounding parts, spanning its top and extend- 

 ing to its attenuated ends; the whole an iridescent or 

 burnished purple, with reflections of an hundred kin- 

 dred colors. But, while this delicately shaped and 

 gorgeously tinted little animal rides gracefully along 

 upon the top of the water, dancing merrily with its 

 ripples, we suddenly become aware of an hitherto 

 unseen dense bunch of what resembles a mass of sea- 

 weed, of fine, crinkled hairs and threads, some of 

 which extend far down into the water. We examine 

 it closely — perhaps touch it with our hands. It 

 stings us with an electric stroke that makes us feel as 

 if our whole hand had become suddenly alive with a 

 fiery infusion of nettle, which remains for nearly half 

 an hour. The bubble itself, to this wonderful, com- 

 posite animal, is four to six inches in length and 

 some three wide and high in its centre. The bunch 

 of [[living polyps beneath, twice that size; while the 

 ravellings, for such they seem to be, hang downwards 

 to from twelve to eighteen inches below the clustered 

 mass above, Now this assemblage of living individ- 

 uals must be studied separately from the bubble, as 

 we will still call it. Investigation proves that this is 

 not a single individual, as would at first appear, but 

 a colony of innumerable zooids, carrying above them, 

 a huge wind bladder— apparently, only to sustain 

 them just below the surface of the water. The true 

 home of this living, floating island is in the Gulf of 

 Mexico. It must, therefore, only casually drift so 

 far north as its present limit — which is rarely beyond 

 Cape Cod. Three specimens, only, were found dur- 

 ing our stay at Penikese, of which, I believe, I alone 

 {To be continued.) 



