Poor creature, perhaps she got wrecked or stranded again, ere long, for it is impossible to navigate with weaker means or in a fashion more dangerous. The Medusæ fear the shore where so many hard substances hurt them, and in the open sea they are liable to be overturned at every gust of wind, in which case, their swimming-feathers being above instead of below their bodies, they are carried hither and thither, at random, upon the waves, as the prey of fish or the delight of birds who find sport and profit in seizing them.
During a whole season which I spent on the banks of Gironde I saw them cast ashore to perish miserably by hundreds. On their arrival they were white and brilliant as crystal. Alas! How different was their aspect in the course of a couple of days. Very happily they sank beneath the sand and were lost to my pitying view.
They are the food of every thing marine, and have themselves scarce any aliment, none that we know of, but the, as yet, scarce organized atoms floating in the sea which they, etherialize, as we may say, and suck in without making them suffer. They have neither teeth nor weapons; no defence, excepting that some species, Forbes says not all, can secrete, when attacked, a liquid which stings somewhat like the nettle, but so faintly that Dicquemare with impunity received some of it in his eye.
Here we have, indeed, a creature little provided and in great peril. She is superior already; she has senses, and, if we may judge from her contractions, a great sensibility to suffering. She cannot, like the Polypus, be divided and live. Divide him and you double his existence; divide her and she dies. Gelatinous as the polypus, the Medusa seems to be an embryon cast away too soon from the bosom of the common mother, torn from the solid base and the association to which the Polypus owes his safety, and launched into adventure. How has the imprudent creature set out? How, without sails, or oars, or helm, has she left her port? What is her point of departure?
Ellis, as long ago as 1750, saw a little Medusa produced from the campanular polypus, and many later observers have ascertained that she is a kind of polypus that has left the society. To speak more simply, she is an escaped polypus.
And the learned M. Forbes who has so deeply studied them, very aptly asks, what is there astonishing in that? It only shows that to that extent the animal still obeys the vegetable law. From the tree, the collective being, proceeds the individual, the detached fruit which fruit will make another tree. A pear tree is a sort of vegetable polypus of which the pear, (the emancipated individual) can give us a pear tree.
In like manner, adds Forbes, as the leaf laden tree, stops in its development, contracts, and becomes an organ of love—i. e. a flower, the Polypier, contracting some of its polypes and transforming their contractions, forms the placenta, the eggs from which proceeds the young and graceful Medusa.
One would guess as much from her hesitating grace, that weakness at once so unarmed and so fearless, which embarks without instruments of navigation, and trusts too much to life. It is the first tender and touching adventure of the new soul going forth without defence from the security of the common life, to be itself, an individual acting and suffering on its own account—soft sketch of free nature; an embryon of liberty.
To be oneself, oneself alone, in a little complete world, was a great temptation for all. A universal seduction! a beautiful folly, which causes all the effort and all the progress of the world, from our earth upward to the very stars. But in her first attempts the Medusa, seems especially unjustified. One would say that she was created on purpose to be drowned. Laden above, and ill-ballasted below, she is formed in conditions exactly opposite to those of her parent, the Physalie. This latter displays on the surface of the water, only a little balloon, an insubmersible membrane and below has infinitely long tentaculæ, of twenty feet or more, which steady her, sweep the waters, stupefy the fish, make prey of him. Light and careless, inflating her pearly balloon of blue or purple tints, she darts from her long hairy tentaculæ a subtle and murderous poison. Less formidable, the Velelles are no less secure. They have the form of radeaux, their minute organization is already somewhat solid, and they can steer and trim their oblique sail to every wind. The Porpites, that seem to be only a flower, a sea Margaret, have their own peculiar levity; even after death, they continue to float. It is the same with many other fantastic and almost aërial beings, garlands with golden bells or with rosebuds—such as the Physopheres, Stephanomie, &c., azure girdles of Venus. All these swim and float invincibly, fear only the shore, and sail boldly out on the open sea, and when it is ever so rough are perfectly safe there. So little do the Porpites and Velelles fear the sea, that, being able to rise at pleasure, they exert themselves to sink to the concealing depths when the weather is bad.
Not such is our poor Medusa. Fearing the shore, she is also in danger at sea. She could sink into the depths at will, but the watery abyss is forbidden to her; she can live only on the surface, in the broad light and in full peril. She sees, she hears, and her sense of touch is very delicate, to her misfortune, too much so. She cannot guide herself; her most complicated organs overload and overbalance her.