Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3.
It was easy to see that the creature was of a star pattern, but it had four, and not five rays. Its plan was like Figure 1. If these rays are bent down, you will see that they may form the frame of a bell-shape, like Figure 2. The ends of these four rays often run out into arms, like Figure 3. All the soft pink-and-cream jelly-like stuff fills up between the upper part of the rays and gathers into the ruffles along the edge.
This is the plan on which the jelly-fish is built. His frame is built of four rays. The four parts between the rays may be again divided and be eight and not four. Again, there may be sixteen rays instead of eight. But the plan is the same.
LESSON XXXVII.
THE LIFE OF A JELLY-FISH.
It is from the clear stuff between the rays, the stuff which forms the bell or disk part, that the jelly-fish has its common name.
It has also another name, which means nettle, from the plant called a nettle. The leaves of this plant can prick and sting your skin, and make it burn. The fine, long arms of the jelly-fish can sting in the same way.
The jelly-fish is nearly all water. It is made of flesh as fluid as the white of an egg. If taken from the water, jelly-fish die in a very short time. They die by drying up. A very large jelly-fish will dry to a thin, small skin.
I do not know of any other living creature so soft, or so nearly all water, as a jelly-fish. And yet these are true animals. They can hear, see, feel, and, no doubt, can also taste as other animals do.