PLATE XXXIX
THE SEA CUCUMBER (1)
IF you grope about in the dark nooks and corners of a rock-pool, quite close down to the water’s edge, when the tide is out, you may perhaps find a curious little creature which looks rather like a greyish-white cucumber, with an odd feathery tuft at one end of its body. This is a Sea Cucumber, or Sea Gherkin, and is chiefly remarkable because it seems to suffer very much at times from eating something which does not agree with it. Then it cures itself in a very odd way indeed. It gets rid of almost all the inside of its body, reducing itself to very little more than an empty bag of skin, with just a little tuft at one end! It throws off its teeth, it throws off the lining of its throat, it throws off all its digestive organs. You would think that it would kill itself by doing this, wouldn’t you? But it does not. And before very long new teeth, a new throat lining, and new digestive organs grow in the place of the old ones, so that in a few weeks’ time the animal is just as perfect as it was before!
1. SEA CUCUMBER.2. THE COMMON JELLYFISH.
It seems rather hard to believe that an animal can treat itself in such a manner as this, and yet continue to live, doesn’t it? But remember that “truth is stranger than fiction,” and that some of the strangest animals of all are found among those which live in the sea.
PLATE XXXIX
JELLYFISHES (2)
Jellyfishes are among the very oddest creatures which are found in the sea; for their bodies are made up almost entirely of sea-water! It is quite true, of course, that if you cut them in two the water does not run away. But then if you cut a cucumber in two the water does not run away; and yet cucumbers are made almost entirely of water. And the reason why it does not run away is just the same in each case. Both in the cucumber and in the jellyfish the water is contained in a very large number of very tiny cells; and if you cut either of them across you only divide a very small number of the cells, so that only a very small quantity of water escapes. But if you leave a jellyfish lying on the beach in the hot sunshine, and come back to look for it two or three hours later, you will not find it. All that you will find will be a ring-shaped mark in the sand, showing where the jellyfish had been lying, with just a few threads of animal matter in the middle. All the rest will have evaporated, because it was nothing else but water.