It is the common electricity which the half-living waters throw off in stormy weather; the innocent and pacific lightning of which all marine creatures are then so many conductors. They inhale it, and they exhale it, and they restore it largely when they die. The sea gives it, and the sea takes it back again. Along the coasts and in the straits, the currents and the collisions, cause it to circulate the more powerfully, and each creature, according to its waters, takes more or less of it. Here, immense surfaces of peaceable infusoriæ appear, like a milky sea, of a mild, white light, which, when more animated, turns to the yellow of burning sulphur; there their conical lights pirouette upon their own bases, or roll in red balls. A great disc of fire (Pyrosome) commences with an opaline yellow, becomes for a moment greenish, then bursts into red and orange, and at last darkens down into blue. These changes occur with an approach to regularity that would indicate a natural function, the contraction and dilatation of some vast creature, breathing fire. Then on the horizon, fiery serpents writhe and glide along an immense length--sometimes to the extent of twenty-five or thirty leagues. The Biphores and the Salpas, transparent alike to sea and sulphur, are the performers in this serpentine spectacle, an astonishing company which disport themselves in this frantic dance, and then separate. Separated, its free members produce free little ones, which, in their turn light up the horizon with their dancing and wild lights. Great fleets, more peaceful, float over the waves of lights. The Velelles, at night, light up their little craft. The Beroes are triumphant as flames. None more magical than those of our Medusæ. Is it in part a physical effect like that which gives their serpentine motion to the Salpas, injected with fire? Is it, as others think, and as some observations would lead us to believe, an act of aspiration? Is it a caprice, as with so many beings that throw out their sparkles and flashes of a vain and inconstant joy? No, the noble and beautiful Medusæ, such as the crowned Oceanique, and the lovely Idonea, seem to express gravest thoughts. Beneath them, their luminous hair, like some sombre watch-light, gives out mysterious lights of emerald and other colors, which, now flashing, anon growing pale, reveal a sentiment, and, I know not what of mystery; suggesting to us the spirit of the abyss, meditating its secrets; the soul that exists, or is to exist some day. Or should it not rather suggest to us some melancholy dream of an impossible destiny which is never to attain its end? Or an appeal to that rapture of love which alone consoles us here below?