United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
You are much better without them, and I must get some medusae." It ended with, "I beg you will not go without that old man," the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself. The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.
'Says the female smuggler; and then gave up in despair; and watched in a dreamy, tired, half-sad mood, the everlasting sparkle of the water as our bows threw it gently off in sheets of flame and 'tender curving lines of creamy' fire, that ran along the glassy surface, and seemed to awaken the sea for yards round into glittering life, as countless diamonds, and emeralds, and topazes, leaped and ran and dived round us, while we slipped slowly by; and then a speck of light would show far off in the blank darkness, and another, and another, and slide slowly up to us shoals of medusae, every one of them a heaving globe of flame; and some unseen guillemot would give a startled squeak, or a shearwater close above our heads suddenly stopped the yarn, and raised a titter among the men, by his ridiculously articulate, and not over-complimentary, cry; and then a fox's bark from the cliffs came wild and shrill, although so faint and distant; or the lazy gaff gave a sad uneasy creak; and then a soft warm air, laden with heather honey, and fragrant odours of sedge, and birch, and oak, came sighing from the land; while all around us was the dense blank of the night, except where now and then some lonely gleam through the southern clouds showed the cliff-tops on our right.
The foam breaking against the prow sparkled like broken fragments of electric globes. When it was absolutely tranquil and the ship remained immovable with drooping sail, the stars passing slowly from one side of the mast to the other, the delicate medusae, that the slightest wave was able to crush, would come to the surface floating on the waters, around the island of wood.
Along the slopes, the crustaceans came scrambling along on their double row of claws attracted by this novelty that was changing the mortal calm of the under-sea where all follow and devour, only to be devoured in turn. Near the surface floated the medusae, living parasols of an opaline whiteness with circular borders of lilac or red bronze.
The functions, also, are divided, certain members of the community being appointed to special offices, in which the others do not share. Some bear the Medusae buds, which in due time become laden with eggs, but, as I have said, wither and die after the eggs are hatched. Others put forth Hydroid buds only, while others again are wholly sterile.
I can trace the growth of my little marine animals all the year round without interruption, by going occasionally over there during the winter. I have at this moment young medusae budding from their polyp nurses, which I expect to see freeing themselves in a few weeks."
These Medusae, as they are called, possess the power of emitting light similar to that of the fire-fly. In short, Ailie, they are the fire-flies and glow-worms of the ocean." The child listened with wonder, and for some minutes remained silent.
We saw no land, not even an iceberg, and very few vessels. For five or six successive evenings when in the parallels of 40 and 41 degrees South between the meridians of 133 and 113 degrees West we enjoyed the fine sight of thousands of large Pyrosomae in the water, each producing a greater body of light than I ever saw given out by any other of the pelagic-luciferous mollusca or medusae.
There are days also when countless medusae drift in beautiful veined creatures that throb like hearts, with perpetual systole and diastole of their diaphanous envelops: some, of translucent azure or rose, seem in the flood the shadows or ghosts of huge campanulate flowers; others have the semblance of strange living vegetables, great milky tubers, just beginning to sprout.
There are other animals in the sea, besides medusae, which assist in giving luminosity to its waters; and there are other insects, besides corallines, which extract its lime, destroy its equilibrium, and assist in causing its perpetual motion; but the two species which we have described are the best types of the respective classes to which they belong.
Word Of The Day