The Ocean World: Being a Description of the Sea and Its Living Inhabitants.Figuier, Louis
Science
The Ocean World: Being a Description of the Sea and Its Living Inhabitants.
Figuier, Louis
Marine animals; Ocean
We have seen that the _Physophora_, the _Agalma_, and the _Apolemia_
have for the use of the colony a vast number of swimming vesicles and a
terminal aërial vesicle. It is much the same in the _Prayæ_ or Diphydæ.
In this family a great number of natatory vesicles are connected with
the terminal aërial vesicle, as in Fig. 101, _Praya diphys_. This
species is widely diffused in the sea which bathes the Nicean coast, but
it is very difficult to procure perfect specimens. M. Vogt found
fragments more than three feet long which swam on the surface, and was
in its state of contraction not more than a finger's length. This
species has been met with at Porta della Praya and at San Yago, one of
the Cape de Verde islands.
[Illustration: Fig. 101. Praya diphys (Blainville).]
The colony of the Praya presents two great locomotive bell shaped
masses, between which the common trunk is suspended, and to which it can
retire. This cylindrical trunk, which is thin and transparent, carries
from space to space certain groups very exactly circumscribed and
individualised. Each of these groups consists of a nursing polyp, having
its fishing-line with a special floating air-bladder, a reproductive bud
male or female, and a protecting casque enveloping the whole.
Another species having a great resemblance to the _Praya_ is _Galeolaria
aurantiaca_ (Plate VIII.), or orange Galeolaria, which is represented on
the opposite page, borrowed from the fine "Memoir of the Inferior
Animals of the Mediterranean," by Carl Vogt. Here we find only two great
floating bladders placed at each extremity of a common trunk, and
serving the purpose of a locomotive apparatus to the whole colony. This
trunk carries in like manner polyps placed at regular intervals forming
isolated groups, provided each with its protecting plates. But there is
no special swimming apparatus for each of these groups. Moreover, each
colony is either male or female.
PHYSALIA.
Let us finally note among the Siphonophoræ a zoophyte which has
attracted great attention, and has been described under many names.
Sailors call it the sea-bladder, from its resemblance to that organ; it
is also known as the Portuguese man-of-war, from its fancied resemblance
to a small ship as it floats along under its tiny sail. Naturalists
after Eschscholtz call it _Physalia utriculus_, from the Greek word
φυσαλὶϛ, a bubble, and utriculus from its stinging powers. It was
long thought that the Physalia was an isolated individual. But,
according to recent researches, they form, like the species already
described, an animal republic.
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