ACALEPHiE. 
255 
S'lese man-of-war is among them, sometimes paying its visit in fleets, 
1Uore commonly in single stranded hulks. Scarcely a season passes 
"About one or more of these lovely strangers occurring in the vicinity 
^ Torquay. Usually,” he adds in a note, “ in these stranded examples 
e tentacles and suckers are much mutilated by washing on the shore. 
le fishermen, who pick them up, always endeavour to make a harvest 
°f IV v - - -■ »■’ ” 
% 
'heir capture, not by selling, hut by making an exhibition of them. 
. ^fic Physalia seem to be gregarious in their habits, herding together 
^ s fioals. Floating on the sea between the tropics in both oceans, 
, 6 y oiay be seen now carried along by currents, now driven by the 
ra de- winds, draggin" behind them their long tentacular appendages, 
Jjv\ J1 Oo O t 
^ 1 c °nspicuous by their rich and varied colouring, from pale crimson 
0 ultramarine blue. “ Certainly,” says Lesson, “ we can readily 
jOOceive that a poetical imagination might well compare the graceful 
rni °f the Physalia to the most elegant of sailing-vessels, even if it 
keened to the wind under a sail of satin, and dragged behind it de- 
, ei tful garlands which struck with death every creature which suffered 
'l f to be attracted by its seductive appearance.” 
f fishes have the misfortune to come in contact with one of these 
^Satures, each tentacule, by a movement as rapid as a flash oi light, 
CdUil LeiiLdL UK. , Uj cl -U-l'-' * Liiiv/irr o ’ 
^ Su dden as an electric shock, seizes and benumbs them, winding round 
6lr bodies as a serpent winds itself round its victim. A Physalia of 
fl ' f : siz e of a walnut will kill a fish much stronger than a herring. The 
fish and the polypes are the habitual prey ot the Physalia. 
***** describes them as seizing and benumbing them by means 
th / 6 ^ en bacles, which are alternately contracted to half an inch, and 
a y hot out with amazing velocity to the length of several feet, drag- 
sto° *^ e helpless and entangled prey to the sucker-like mouths and 
Ull^^h'like cavities concealed among the tentacles, which he saw 
bep ^ ile h e looked on. Dr. Wallach thinks Mr. Bennett must have 
mistaken in what he saw; “because he has observed that in a 
Illlm ber of instances the Physalia is accompanied by small fishes 
hb I'll Q »r n .. — . -1 _ J A i-h y\ nrl f All f 
tfi, 
ta tion. 
ac 'fual 
th 
for 
play around and among the depending tentacles without moles 
He has in so many cases seen this, and oven witnessed the 
c °ntact of the fishes with the tentacles, with no inconvenience to 
aVe . me r, that he too hastily concludes that the urticating organs 
^ Nocuous.” “Surely,” says Gosse, “the premises by no means 
lilut such an inference. There is no antagonism between the two 
