Half hours with the lower animals : $b protozoans, sponges, corals, shells, insects, and crustaceans — John Shaqi
Half hours with the lower animals : $b protozoans, sponges, corals, shells, insects, and crustaceansHolder, Charles Frederick
Science
Half hours with the lower animals : $b protozoans, sponges, corals, shells, insects, and crustaceans
Holder, Charles Frederick
Animals; Invertebrates
No conception of the beauties of the jellyfish can be formed from
pictures, or from the stranded "sunfishes" found along the shore at
low tide. In the water they move along or swim by the slow pumping or
rising and falling of the umbrella or disk, and are of all the colors
of the rainbow. Some, like the dark, lavender-splashed specimens, can
be seen from a long distance, while others are almost invisible, in
fact, are like glass or crystal, and interpose no obstacle to other
forms beyond. The ocean is filled with them; their chaste shapes
presenting one of the most beautiful spectacles to be observed in the
ocean as they drift about. Some are merely great disks towing behind
them enormous masses of pink fluted jelly, as in Figure 23; others are
simple flowerlike forms (Fig. 24).
If these graceful forms are beautiful during the day, what shall
we say of them at night, when they blaze and glow with marvelous
phosphorescent lights of yellow, green, and gold. Gazing into the
ocean these great jellies appear like comets moving through the clear
atmosphere of the sea. The Cyanea is pale blue. One jelly, called
Melicerta, emits a pale golden radiance, and Rhizostoma (Fig. 25) gives
out a fixed steely blue light. It would be difficult to find one out of
all this marvelous procession of living gems that does not emit a light
more or less peculiarly its own.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Jellyfish (_Rhizostoma_).]
If this phosphorescence is fascinating as we are drifting over the
scene and the light givers are not alarmed, how much more dazzling is
the display when the sea is beaten into foam. In a certain cave on the
coast of Santa Catalina Island, California, the sea rushes in and,
striking the rocks, rises like a wave of fire and bathes the entire
interior with liquid light which slowly falls in gleaming rivulets to
the sea.
But the most magnificent display is seen at Point Firmin Light during a
storm. Here stands a lofty rock pillar which has breasted the sea for
ages. At low tide, when a storm sea strikes the ledge, the spray rises
to an altitude of three hundred feet, and spreading as it rises, fairly
fills the air with a gigantic mass of silvery light, that on a dark
night presents an appalling spectacle as it drops, changing its shape
continually. On such nights the line of breakers changes into silvery
flame, while the roar resembles a cannonade, fairly shaking the earth.
In the breakers the jelly light givers are breaking up and adding
fuel to the seeming flame. Some, as Pelagia, are luminous over their
entire surface; in others, the light is confined to certain parts,
which are either fixed or flashing lights. How vivid this light is may
be imagined when it is said that a single jellyfish, Aurelia, when
squeezed into a glass of milk, has produced a light by which a letter
was read.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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