HYDROID FROM WHICH THE JELLY-FISH GROWS.
The monster when alive looks as much as anything like an immense circular plate or dish of glass floating bottom upward on the sea. The color of the body is a brownish-red, with a rather broad margin of creamy white edged with blue, while the tentacles—pink, blue, brown, and purple—hang like skeins of colored glass threads from the under parts of the shield. Very beautiful are these threads, glistening with a silky lustre beneath the waves, but they are extremely dangerous, too. Each of these threads, in fact, contains myriads of cells, in each one of which is coiled up, ready to be darted forth on contact with any living substance, a whip-like lance finer than the finest cambric needle. Millions of these stings entering at once cause a sensation like that of a violent electric shock, paralyzing and often killing the creature with which they come in contact.
This gigantic creature grows from the small one, called a hydroid, represented in the small cut. You see the hydroid does not in the least resemble a jelly-fish. Perhaps the strangest thing about these wonderful lumps of animated jelly is that their young are not jelly-fishes at all, but an entirely different sort of animals. Sometimes they take the shape of a pile of platters, which finally separate and become individual jelly-fish; sometimes they grow into living plants which bear eggs like fruit, which eggs hatch and finally become jelly-fish. No fairy tale can afford instances of transformations so surprising as do these animals—more like animated bubbles than anything else to which they can be compared; transparent and exhibiting the most brilliant colors, they dissolve away when stranded so completely that no trace of their substance seems to remain.
THE FIRST DROP OF BITTERNESS.
THE FIRST DROP OF BITTERNESS.
Come, little one, open your mouth!
I know it is bitter to drink;
But if you'll stop squirming and squalling,
You'll have it all down in a wink.
The poor little baby is sick,
And this is to cure the bad pain;
So swallow the medicine, darling,
And soon you can frolic again.
How glad should we be, who are older,
And have bitter burdens to bear,
To find out some wonderful doctor
With cures for each sorrow and care!