The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 59, September, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The substance of these animals seems to have hardly more density or
solidity than their native element. I remember showing one to a friend
who had never seen such an animal before, and after watching its
graceful motions for a moment in the glass bowl where it was swimming,
he asked, "Is it anything more than organized water?" The question was
very descriptive; for so little did it seem to differ in substance from
the water in which it floated that one might well fancy that some drops
had taken upon themselves organic structure, and had begun to live and
move. It swims by means of rapid contractions and expansions of its
disk, thus impelling itself through the water, its tentacles floating
behind it and measuring many times the length of the body. The disk is
very convex, as will be seen by the wood-cut; four tubes radiate from
the central cavity to the periphery, where they unite in a circular tube
around the margin and connect also with the four tentacles; from the
centre of the lower surface hangs the proboscis, terminating in a mouth.
Notwithstanding the delicate structure of this little being, it is
exceedingly voracious. It places itself upon the surface of the animal
on which it feeds, and, if it have any hard parts, it simply sucks the
juices, dropping the dead carcass immediately after; but it swallows
whole the little Acalephs of other Species and other soft animals that
come in its way. Early in summer these Jelly-Fishes drop their eggs,
little transparent pear-shaped bodies, covered with vibratile cilia.
They swim about for a time, until they have found a resting-place, where
they attach themselves, each one founding a Hydroid stock of its own,
which will in time produce a new brood of Medusae.
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