OCEAN FLOWERS AND LAMPS “These are the works of the Lord and His wonders in the Deep.” Ps. civ. 24. “Every track Was a flash of living fire.”--COLERIDGE. “We have already learned,” wrote Albert, Prince of Monaco, not long since, in reference to recent Ocean researches--“that a whole world of Fishes, Molluscs, Annelids, Medusæ, Cephalopoda, and Crustaceans, come to the surface at night, and return before day to a depth of some hundreds of fathoms, forming a living tide which ebbs and flows in every sea.” Letting alone for the moment other creatures mentioned in the above list, let us think about the vast world of MEDUSÆ--of JELLY-FISHES and their relatives--with which the Ocean is largely peopled. Whether Hydroids, Jelly-fishes proper, Coral-polyps, or Sea-Anemones, they all belong to a low order in the Animal Kingdom. Higher, certainly, than the minute specks of life described in past chapters; higher than Foraminifers; higher than Sponges; but lower than Sea-urchins and Starfishes; very much lower than Worms and Oysters. They vary immensely in size, ranging from minute jelly-bags, without limbs or heads, mouths or stomachs, to great masses of jelly-like substance, with eyes and mouths and powerful stinging apparatus. All these are included in the circle of near relatives to the “Medusæ,” which name was first bestowed upon the anemones from a supposed likeness between the snaky tresses of the mythological Medusa and the tentacles of these soft-bodied animals. “Ocean-flowers,” many of them may truly be called, since they live and grow, rooted like a plant to one spot; since also they put forth veritable buds and blossoms. Only they are in nature not vegetable, but animal. Many of these ocean blooms are exquisitely beautiful; but they may not always be gathered with impunity. “Ocean-lamps,” too, many may with truth be named. Large numbers of the coral-polyps, large numbers of the hydroids, and perhaps all of the free-swimming medusæ or jelly-fishes, carry with them their own little lanterns, wherewith at night to make bright the surface of the sea--wherewith also to bear glimmers of light downward into those black depths where sunlight cannot reach. That Jelly-fish which “swam in a tropical sea,” and said, “This world it consists of ME!” must have been an unusually intelligent specimen of its kind. Jelly-fishes in general are not credited with even much bodily sensation, far less with mental originality. Coral-polyps have had their meed of attention in an earlier chapter. There is a near relationship between the reef-builders of equatorial seas and the anemones of British sea-beaches. But the anemone is a creature of distinctly higher development than the co-operative coral-polyp. It has at least the great gift of individuality, which its reef-cousins have not.