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
Besides the Beröe, naturalists place the Cydippa, which is frequently
confounded with the former. The Cydippæ are globulous or egg-shaped,
furnished with eight rows of cilia, corresponding with as many sections
more or less distinct, and terminated by two long filiform tentacles
issuing from the base of the zoophyte and fringed on the sides. "It is,"
says Gosse, "a globe of pure colourless jelly, about as big as a small
marble, often with a wart-like swelling at one of its poles, where the
mouth is placed. At the other end there are minute orifices, and between
the two passes the stomach, which is flat or wider in one diameter than
the other." _Cydippe pileus_, found abundantly in the spring on the
Belgian coast, is so transparent that it is scarcely visible in the
water, where it seems like living, moving crystal. _C. densa_, which
abounds in the Mediterranean, is of a crystalline white, with rows of
reddish cirrhi, terminating in two tentacles, much longer and coloured
red; it is about the size of a hazel-nut, and phosphorescent. Within the
clear substance of the _Cydippe_, on each side of the stomach, there is
a capacious cavity, which communicates with the surface, and within each
cavity is fixed the tentacle, of great length and very slender, which
the animal can at pleasure shoot out of the orifice and suffer to trail
through the water, shortening, lengthening, twisting, twining, or
contracting it into a tiny ball at will, or withdrawing it into its
cavity, short filaments being given off at intervals over the whole
length of this attenuated white thread-like apparatus, each of which can
also be lengthened or shortened, and coiled individually. These proceed
only from one side of the thread-like tentacle, although, at a casual
glance, they seem to proceed now from one side, now from the other.
CALLIANIRA.
The Callianira form a sort of connecting link between the _Beröes_
and the _Cestidæ_. Their bodies are smooth and regular,
vertically-elongated, compressed on one side and as if lobated on the
other; in substance they are gelatinous, hyalin, and tubular, obtuse at
both extremities, with buccal openings between the prolongations of the
side, and two pair of conical appendages resembling wings, capable of
expansion, on the edges of which two rows of vibratory cilia are ranged.
A great transversal opening presents itself at one of the extremities, a
small one at the other. The animal is furnished with two branching
tentacles, but without cilia.
CESTIDÆ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account