9 
ground; a barrier or fringing reef, coral studded flats and 
muddy shoals, turtle grass in abundance, rocky shores, tide pools, 
lovely beaches, lagoons, extensive mangrove swamps, deep water not 
too far outside the reef, and for tropical insect life, a variety of 
habitats in the xerophytic "bush” on shore. 
The first biological surprise was tbe swarming of the little dark 
brownish-looking, blue— speckled Jellyfish that were hastening by the ship 
the morning of April 14. Literally thousands of half-ineh high and 
slightly wider "thimbles” seemed to be spinning clockwise rushing along 
in several streaks, or bands. Though none ot us had ever seen anything 
like it, this species of tentacle-less Jellyfish with • es Hoped margin, 
Linuche ungulculata , in the spring in the Bahama -Florida region is said 
to form swarms miles in extent. When they mature in April, they rise to 
the surface in immense numbers . The ripe female gonads are slate colored, 
a blue-gray perhaps, the male, yellowish brown. The eggs are discharged 
and fertilized in the eea about 8 p.m. after which the Jellyfish sink to the 
bottom to die. The species goes through an alternation of generations. The 
egg develops into a little sessile dantlike organism from which the larval 
Jellyfish are pinched off, or shed by a process known as s t rob i 1 i zat ion , to 
become free-swimming and to grow up to mature next April, to repeat the cycle. 
I do not know if Linuche swarms every year, but this Ascension Bay swarm 
is the first I've ever witnessed though I have cruised the Caribbean 
eeveral Aprils in succession. Reported most widely distributed in tropic 
seas, the Museum heretofore only had specimens from off the coast of Cuba, 
the Bahamas , and Florida, drifting in the Gulf Stream. It so happens that 
