78 
LIFE, IN ITS LOWER FORMS. 
almost the whole may be resolved into simple water, 
or a fluid which no chemical analysis lias been able to 
distinguish from sea-water. A large sea-blubber weigh- 
ing fifty ounces is cast upon the beach, and after lying 
exposed to a day’s hot sun, all that remains is a subtile 
and impalpable film spread over the sand where it lay, 
which, if carefully collected, will not weigh five grains. 
The texture appoars to be a collection of cells formed 
of the most attenuated membrane and filled with sea- 
water. 
Yet out of these simple elements, according to the re- 
searches of Professor Agassiz, the muscular, the vascular, 
the nervous, and other tissues are composed ; various 
organs, some of them sufficiently complex, are formed ; and 
different functions are originated. By a periodical suc- 
cession of alternate expansions and contractions, the 
apparently helpless animal contrives to pump itself 
along through the waves with force and precision ; by 
the elastic threads which lie coiled up in innumerable 
capsules, ready to be darted into the flesh of its intended 
prey, it can instantly arrest, benumb, and paralyse the 
lithe worm and the arrowy fish ; by the contractility 
of its fimbriated membranes it can drag the prey to 
its protrusile mouth, in which it is speedily engulphed, 
and almost as speedily digested. Feeble and inert as 
they appear, some of these animals are truly to be dreaded 
for their power of stinging, whence the whole class have 
derived their appellation of A ealephee, or nettles. “ Among 
them,” says Professor Edward Forbes, “ Cyancea capillata 
of our seas is a most formidable creature, and the terror 
of tender-skinned bathers. With its broad, tawny, fes- 
