“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.