Chapter VIII: Acalephæ, or Sea Nettles (3)

"V. I have also procured many 'galleys' since these experiments, and having placed them in a glass tube, left them to dry and had them pulverized; twenty-five grains of this powder administered to a very young dog produced no deleterious effects. Twice this quantity administered to a young cat produced no more, nor has this surprised me; for, if the fresh animal has no poisonous properties, how can it be supposed that drying the zoophyte can have increased its poisonous properties, if it really possesses them? On the contrary, it is more reasonable to suppose that, by desiccation, the deleterious principle from any animal, whether _Physalia_ or _Holothuria_, should lose infinitely in its principle by evaporation, and other changes that heat and air produce in the process of drying.

"VI. I have had a 'galley' cut into pieces, and got a fat young chicken to swallow them. It caused no inconvenience. Three hours after, I had the chicken killed and roasted; then I ate it, and made my servant eat it too. Neither of us experienced any inconvenience from it, a certain proof that it is not from eating Physalia that the fish becomes poisonous.

"VII. I put twenty-five grains of powdered _Physalia_ in a little 'bouillon;' I swallowed the dose without the least fear, and I felt no inconvenience from it."

After these experiments, which are certainly quite conclusive, what are we to think of the story related of a certain M. Tébé, the managing partner of a house in Guadaloupe, who fell a victim to his cook, who is said, after having sought in vain to poison him with the rasping of his nails, which he had spread carefully over the roasted fish daily served up for dinner, determined, seeing that he had signally failed by other means, to put into his soup a pulverized Physalia. An hour after his repast, this gentleman appeared in the burgh of Lamantin, at a little distance from his habitation, and, while entering the city with some friends, he was seized with violent pains in the stomach and intestines, racking him as if by the most corrosive poison. His illness increased until the next day, when he died, under the most excruciating pains. On examination, the stomach and intestines were found to be violently inflamed and corroded, as if he had been poisoned with arsenic, and I have no doubt that it was with this poison, or some other corrosive substance, that M. Tébé really was poisoned. The negroes never make known the substance with which they commit a poisoning; they confess all but the truth, which they are sworn never to reveal--the means they employ, so far as the poisoning material is concerned, are never communicated by confession.

The habits of the Physalia are still imperfectly known, but among the many strange forms of brilliant colour and elegant contour, which swarm in the warmer parts of the ocean, "none," says Gosse, "take a stronger hold on the fancy of the beholder; certainly none is more familiar than the little thing he daily marks floating in the sun-lit waves, as the ship glides swiftly by, which the sailors tell him is the Portuguese man-of-war. Perhaps a dead calm has settled over the sea, and he leans over the bulwarks of the ship scrutinizing the ocean-rover at leisure, as it hastily rises and falls on the long, sluggish heavings of the glassy surface. Then he sees that the comparison of the stranger to a ship is a felicitous one, for at a little (Fig. 102) distance it might well be mistaken for a child's mimic boat, shining in all the gaudy painting in which it left the toy-shop.

"Not unfrequently, one of these tiny vessels comes so close alongside, that, by means of the ship's bucket, with the assistance of a smart fellow who has jumped into the 'chains' with a boat-hook, it is captured, and brought on deck for examination. A dozen voices are, however, lifted, warning you by no means to touch it, for well the experienced sailor knows its terrible powers of defence. It does not now appear so like a ship as when it was at a distance. It is an oblong bladder of tough membrane, varying considerably in shape, for no two agree in this respect; varying also in size, from less than an inch to the size of a man's hat. Once, on a voyage to Mobile, when rounding the Florida reef, I was nearly a whole day passing through a fleet of these little Portuguese men-of-war, which studded the smooth sea as far as the eye could reach, and must have extended for many miles. They were of all sizes within the limits I have mentioned."

Generally, there is a conspicuous difference between the two extremities of the bladder, one end being rounded, the other more pointed, or terminating in a small knob-like swelling or beak-shaped excrescence, where there is a minute orifice; sometimes, however, no such excrescence is visible, and the orifice cannot be detected.

"That wonderful river," continues Mr. Gosse, in his nervous, eloquent style, "with a well-defined course through the midst of the Atlantic--that Gulf Stream--brings on its warm waters many of the denizens of tropical seas, and wafts them to the shores on which its waves impinge. Hence it is that so many of the proper pelagic creatures are from time to time observed on the coasts of Cornwall and Devon. The Portuguese man-of-war is among them, sometimes paying its visit in fleets, more commonly in single stranded hulks. Scarcely a season passes without one or more of these lovely strangers occurring in the vicinity of Torquay. Usually," he adds in a note, "in these stranded examples the tentacles and suckers are much mutilated by washing on the shore. The fishermen who pick them up always endeavour to make a harvest of their capture, not by selling, but by making an exhibition of them."

The Physalia seem to be gregarious in their habits, herding together in shoals. Floating on the sea between the tropics in both oceans, they may be seen now carried along by currents, now driven by the trade-winds, dragging behind them their long tentacular appendages, and conspicuous by their rich and varied colouring, from pale crimson to ultramarine blue. "Certainly," says Lesson, "we can readily conceive that a poetical imagination might well compare the graceful form of the Physalia to the most elegant of sailing-vessels, even if it careened to the wind under a sail of satin, and dragged behind it deceitful garlands which struck with death every creature which suffered itself to be attracted by its seductive appearance."

If fishes have the misfortune to come in contact with one of these creatures, each tentacle, by a movement as rapid as a flash of light, or sudden as an electric shock, seizes and benumbs them, winding round their bodies as a serpent winds itself round its victim. A Physalia of the size of a walnut will kill a fish much stronger than a herring. The flying fish and the polyps are the habitual prey of the Physalia. Mr. Bennett describes them as seizing and benumbing them by means of the tentacles, which are alternately contracted to half an inch, and then shot out with amazing velocity to the length of several feet, dragging the helpless and entangled prey to the sucker-like mouths and stomach-like cavities concealed among the tentacles, which he saw filled while he looked on. Dr. Wallach thinks Mr. Bennett must have been mistaken in what he saw; "because he has observed that in a great number of instances the Physalia is accompanied by small fishes, which play around and among the depending tentacles without molestation. He has in so many cases seen this, and even witnessed the actual contact of the fishes with the tentacles, with no inconvenience to the former, that he too hastily concludes that the urticating organs are innocuous." "Surely," says Gosse, "the premises by no means warrant such an inference. There is no antagonism between the two series of facts witnessed by such excellent observers; the venomous virulence of these organs has been abundantly proved by many naturalists, myself among the number, and Mr. Bennett to his cost, as already narrated. We can only suppose that the injection of the poison is under the control of the Physalia's will, and the impunity of the bold little fishes is sufficiently accounted for."

Among the Physalia captured on our coast, one was obtained at Tenby, by Mr. Hughes, who has given a report of the capture, in which he mentions a circumstance as "normal," which excited Mr. Gosse's curiosity; it was said to be accompanied by "its attendant satellites, two _Vilellæ_. In reply to his inquiries", Mr. Hughes says, "My authority for the association of the Vilella with Physalia is Jenkins, the collector of Tenby, who was attending me when it was found. The Physalia was taken by me first; and, while I was admiring it, I noticed that Jenkins continued his search for something. Immediately afterwards he came up with the Vilella in his hand, at the same time stating they were generally found with the Portuguese man-of-war. As I had found him very honest and truthful in his dealings with me, I accepted his information as correct."

CTENOPHORA.

We have now reached the last class of polyps; those, namely, which Cuvier designates _Hydrostatic Acalepha_, and which De Blainville calls the _Ciliobranchiá_. The body of these polyps presents marginal fringes furnished with vibratile cilia, which are swimming organs. Moreover, as these vibratile fringes are inserted directly over the principal canal, in which the nourishing fluid circulates, they ought necessarily to concur in the act of respiration, by determining the renewal of the water in contact with the corresponding portion of the tegumentary membrane.

The class may be divided into three orders or families, namely, _Beröe_, _Callianirea_, and _Cestea_.

The creatures belonging to these three orders swarm in the deep sea; they often appear quite suddenly, and in vast numbers, in certain localities.

The _Beröes_ of Forskahl have been studied with great care by Mr. Milne Edwards. They inhabit the Gulf of Naples, and other parts of the Mediterranean; the sailors of Provence call them Sea-cucumbers. The body (Fig. 103), cylindrical in form, is of a pale rose colour, thickly studded with small reddish spots, so numerous as to appear entirely punctured with them. It presents eight blue sides, with very fine vibratile cilia, which by their reflection produce all the colours of the rainbow. The substance of the body is gelatinous, its appearance glass-like; its form varies according as the animal is in motion or repose. Sometimes it swells up like a ball; sometimes it reverses itself, so as to resemble a bell; at others it is elongated and cylindrical; at its lower extremity it presents a large mouth; at its upper extremity is found a small nipple, having at its base a spherical point of a reddish colour, enclosing many crystalloid corpuscles, which rest upon a sort of nervous ganglion, whose physiological function is not very well determined. A vast stomach, considering its size, occupies the whole interior of the body of the Beröe: the circulation is also much developed in this zoophyte. The circulating apparatus contains a moving fluid charged with a multitude of circular, colourless globules, which flows from a vascular ring round the mouth towards the summit of the body; in the interior are eight superficial canals, which flow under the ciliated sides, and redescend by two much deeper canals; but the Beröes have no heart. _Beröe ovata_ is a beautiful species, seldom exceeding three inches and a half in length, and two and a half in its larger transverse diameter; is described by Browne, in his "Jamaica," as "of an oval form, obtusely octangular, hollow, open at the larger extremity, transparent, and of a firm gelatinous consistence; it contracts and widens with great facility, but is always open and expanded when it swims or moves. The longitudinal radii are strongest in the crown or smallest extremity where they rise from a very beautiful oblong star, and diminish gradually from thence to the margin, each being furnished with a single series of short, slender, delicate appendages, or limbs (cilia), that move with great celerity in all directions, as the creature pleases to direct its flexions, and in a regular accelerated succession from the top to the margin. It is impossible to express the liveliness of the motions of those delicate organs, or the beautiful variety of colour which rise from them to play to and fro in the rays of the sun; nor is it easy to express the speed and regularity with which the motions succeed each other from one end of the rays to the other." "The grace and beauty which the entire apparatus presents in the living animal," says Gosse, "or the marvellous ease and rapidity with which it can be alternately contracted, extended, and bent at an infinite variety of angles, no verbal description can sufficiently treat. Fortunately the creature is so common in summer and autumn on all our coasts, that few who use the surface can possibly miss its capture. It is worthy of a poet's description, which it has received:--

'When first extracted from her native brine,
Behold a round, small mass of gelatine,
Or frozen dewdrop, void of life and limb;
But round the crystal goblet let her swim
'Midst her own elements; and lo! a sphere
Banded from pole to pole; as diamond clear,
Shaped as bard's fancy shapes the small balloon,
To bear some sylph or fay beyond the moon.
From all her bands see lurid fringes play,
That glance and sparkle in the solar ray
With iridescent hues. Now round and round
She whirls and twirls; now mounts, then sinks profound.'"

DRUMMOND.

Besides the Beröe, naturalists place the Cydippa, which is frequently confounded with the former. The Cydippæ are globulous or egg-shaped, furnished with eight rows of cilia, corresponding with as many sections more or less distinct, and terminated by two long filiform tentacles issuing from the base of the zoophyte and fringed on the sides. "It is," says Gosse, "a globe of pure colourless jelly, about as big as a small marble, often with a wart-like swelling at one of its poles, where the mouth is placed. At the other end there are minute orifices, and between the two passes the stomach, which is flat or wider in one diameter than the other." _Cydippe pileus_, found abundantly in the spring on the Belgian coast, is so transparent that it is scarcely visible in the water, where it seems like living, moving crystal. _C. densa_, which abounds in the Mediterranean, is of a crystalline white, with rows of reddish cirrhi, terminating in two tentacles, much longer and coloured red; it is about the size of a hazel-nut, and phosphorescent. Within the clear substance of the _Cydippe_, on each side of the stomach, there is a capacious cavity, which communicates with the surface, and within each cavity is fixed the tentacle, of great length and very slender, which the animal can at pleasure shoot out of the orifice and suffer to trail through the water, shortening, lengthening, twisting, twining, or contracting it into a tiny ball at will, or withdrawing it into its cavity, short filaments being given off at intervals over the whole length of this attenuated white thread-like apparatus, each of which can also be lengthened or shortened, and coiled individually. These proceed only from one side of the thread-like tentacle, although, at a casual glance, they seem to proceed now from one side, now from the other.

CALLIANIRA.

The Callianira form a sort of connecting link between the _Beröes_ and the _Cestidæ_. Their bodies are smooth and regular, vertically-elongated, compressed on one side and as if lobated on the other; in substance they are gelatinous, hyalin, and tubular, obtuse at both extremities, with buccal openings between the prolongations of the side, and two pair of conical appendages resembling wings, capable of expansion, on the edges of which two rows of vibratory cilia are ranged. A great transversal opening presents itself at one of the extremities, a small one at the other. The animal is furnished with two branching tentacles, but without cilia.

CESTIDÆ.

In _Cestum_, or Venus's Girdle, as it is vulgarly called, we have a long, gelatinous, ribbon-like body, fine, regular, and very short, but much extended on each side, while the edges are furnished with a double row of cilia; the lower surface is also furnished with cilia, but much smaller in size and number. On the middle of the lower edge is the mouth, opening into a large stomach. This alimentary canal runs across the middle of its length, and from it extends, as in the Medusæ, a series of gastric canals, which carry the nutriment into all parts of the body. There are many species of Cestum; among them the best known is _C. veneris_ (Fig. 104), which is found in the Mediterranean, particularly in the sea which bathes the coast of Naples and Nice, where the fishermen call it the _sabre de mer_--sea-sabre. This curious zoophyte unwinds itself on the bosom of the waters, like a scarf of iridescent shades. It is the scarf of Venus traversing the waves, under the fiery rays of the sun, which has coloured it with a thousand reflections of silver and azure blue.