24G 
THE OCEAN WORLD. 
carries from space to space certain groups very exactly circumscribed 
and individualised. Each of these groups consists of a nursing polype, 
having its fishing-line with a special floating air-bladder, a repro- 
ductive bud male or female, and a protecting casque enveloping the 
whole. 
Another species having a great resemblance to the Praya is 
Galeolarict aurantiaca (Plate VIII.) or Orange Galcolaria, which is 
represented on the opposite page, borrowed from the fine “ Memoir of 
the Inferior Animals of the Mediterranean,” by Charles Vogt. Here 
we find only two great floating bladders placed at each extremity of 
a common trunk, and serving the purpose of a locomotive apparatus 
to the whole colony. This trunk carries in like manner polypes 
placed at regular intervals forming isolated groups, provided each with 
its protecting plates. But there is no special swimming apparatus for 
each of these groups. Moreover, each colony is either male or female. 
Piiysalia. 
Let us finally note among the Siphonophorse a zoophyte which has 
attracted great attention, and has been described under many names. 
Sailors call it the sea-bladder, from its resemblance to that organ ; it 
is also known as the Portuguese man-of-war, from its fancied re- 
semblance to a small ship as it floats along under its tiny Sail- 
Naturalists after Eschscholtz call it Physalia uirimlm, from the 
Greek word jjvaaXh, a bubble, and utriculus from its stinging 
powers. It was long thought that the Physalia was an isolated 
individual. But, according to recent researches, they form, like the 
species already described, an animal republic. 
Let us imagine a great cylindrical bladder dilated in the middle, 
attenuated and rounded at its two extremities, of eleven or twelve 
inches in length, and from one to three broad. Its appearance 
is glassy and transparent, its colour an imperfect purple, passing to 
a violet, then to an azure above. It is surmounted by a crest, limpid 
and pure as crystal, veined with purple and violet in decreasing tints- 
Under the vesicle float the fleshy filaments, waving and contorted 
into a spiral form, which sometimes descend perpendicularly like so 
many threads of celestial blue. Sailors believe that the crest which 
