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Updated: May 7, 2025
Sometimes hundreds of these smaller medusae might be seen floating together in the deep glass bowls, or jars, or larger vessels with which Agassiz's laboratory at Nahant was furnished.
And as they touched them there was the swift dissolution, the melting away into putrescence of flesh and bone that I had witnessed when the dart touched fruit that time I had saved Rador and upon this the Medusae gorged; pulsing lambently; their wondrous colours shifting, changing, glowing stronger; elfin moons now indeed, but satellites whose glimmering beauty was fed by death; alembics of enchantment whose glorious hues were sucked from horror.
I do not here allude to their primitive origin, but simply to the general fact that among radiates the embryos of the higher classes represent, in miniature, types of the lower classes, as, for instance, those of the echinoderms resemble the medusae, those of the medusae the polyps.
But, indeed, in the thick diving-dress, the liquid element is no longer felt, and one only seems to be in an atmosphere somewhat denser than the terrestrial atmosphere. Nothing more. After half an hour's walk the soil became stony. Medusae, microscopic crustacea, and pennatules lit it slightly with their phosphorescent gleam.
But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, "Dear mother, will you very much MIND if I go? They will be so disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don't; and Charley really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed nothing but magnifying medusae."
Now that the annelid-hypothesis is "dead and buried," and other attempts to derive the Vertebrates from Medusae, Echinoderms, or Molluscs, have been equally unsuccessful, there is only one hypothesis left to answer the question of the origin of the Vertebrates the hypothesis that I advanced thirty-six years ago and called the "chordonia-hypothesis."
These Medusae, as they are called, have been spoken of by many travellers, who tell us that in some parts of the sea they are so numerous that the whole ocean is covered with them, and seems to be composed of liquid fire, usually of a pale blue or green colour. The appearance is described as being of great splendour. Even in the seas on our own coasts this beautiful light is often seen.
"What a stupendous idea this gives of the immensity of creation, and of the bounty of Divine Providence in furnishing such a profusion of life in a region so remote from the habitations of men! "The larger portion of these medusae, consisting of transparent substances of a lemon-yellow colour, and globular form, appeared to possess very little power of motion.
No one suspects, I fancy, at this moment, that the solid envelope of the Scutellae and the Clypeasters is traversed by a net-work of radiating tubes, corresponding to those of the medusae, so well presented by Ehrenberg in Aurelia aurita.
It may give a better conception of the amount of medusae in this extent, if we calculate the length of time that would be requisite, with a certain number of persons, for counting this number.
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