But I will not lead you thitherward—a noble sight awaits us in our wake. Step to the stern and lean with me over the taffrail. What a glorious vision! For miles abaft, our course presents one long and wide canal of living light—the clear, blue ocean, transparent as air, filling it to repletion; while the darker waters around appear like some dense medium through which superior spirits have constructed this magic path-way for us and us alone, so nicely are its breadth and depth adjusted to the form of our gallant bark. Has not the galaxy been torn from heaven, and whelmed beneath the waves to form that burning road? No! no! Though thousands of bright orbs are set in that nether firmament to strengthen the delusion, yet it cannot be. Night’s stormy cincture never gleamed like this, nor bore such dazzling gems. There it still glimmers with its myriad sparks, athwart the dark blue vault, paled by the radiance of its sea-born rival, while huge globes of fire roll from beneath the keel, and blaze along the silvery track like showers of wandering meteors, but all too gentle in their aspect to be deemed of evil-augury. Those stars are literally _living stars_,—that ocean galaxy is formed of living beings only,—and even those meteors, invisible by day, except when they approach unusually near to the surface, are active in pursuit of prey. Observe one closely, and you perceive its motions. Formed like a great umbrella of transparent jelly, with fibres, yards in length, trailing from its margin, and the handle carved into a beautiful group of leaves, it flaps its way regularly through the water with a stately march, and wo to the unfortunate creature that becomes involved in the meshes of its stinging tendrils. This is no exaggerated picture, for such are the beautiful phenomena occasionally witnessed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The animals upon whose agency they are dependent, generally become invisible by daylight in consequence of their transparency; but there are certain tribes among them whose peculiar structure renders them conspicuous: and of these one of the most remarkable is known to naturalists by the title of Salpa.