Identifier: cu31924001111958 (find matches)
Title: Glimpses of the animate world; or, Science and literature of natural history, for school and home
Year: 1885 (1880s)
Authors: Johonnot, James, 1823-1888, comp
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and Company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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eir foliage massedat the top, and from beneath which there depend bunches,as it were, of grapes or other fruit. These fruit-like clus-ters are jelly-fishes that stick fast, instead of detachingthemselves and becoming free jelly-fishes, as in some othervarieties. 2. The name medusa is applied to the most numerous,remarkable, and beautiful varieties of the jelly-fish. Thesegraceful animals may be observed anywhere in our summerwaters, generally not far from the shore. Seeming to thecareless sight to be mere floating plants, a closer inspectiondiscovers in them animal forms of the rarest beauty ofform and color, that sail hither and thither, and appar-ently have even a certain power of controlling their move-ments against the set of wind and current. LOW LIFE IN THE SEA. 55 3. The general name of the medusa was applied tothis animal on account of the snake-like filaments whichit possesses, highly suggestive of the serpent locks of theGreek Medusa, one of the Gorgons ; perhaps, also, from
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The Medusa. the danger of contact which all too-curious observers in-cur. The property common to nearly all the jelly-fish—that of a most severe and painful sting — is in some ofthe medusae a paralyzing power against which the strongest 56 NATURAL HISTORY READER. men stand no chance. It is believed by scientific menthat many of the cases of the sudden drowning of expe-rienced swimmers is owing in as large degree to the attackof these beautiful and inoffensive-looking sea-creatures as tocramp. 4. Floating on the bosom of the waters, the medusaresembles a bell, an umbrella, or, better still, a Moatingmushroom, the stalk of which has been separated intolobes more or less divergent, sinuous, twisted, shriveled,fringed, the edges of the cup being delicately cut, andprovided with long thread-like appendages, which descendvertically into the water like the drooping branches of theweeping willow. 5. The gelatinous substance of which the body of themedusa is formed is sometimes as clear as

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