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Updated: May 7, 2025
Great numbers of gulls, boobies, puffin, fish-hawks, and solan-geese surround the ship, and the water is full of drifting medusae. Half an hour ago the fog began to lift, and at 11.40 the captain, who had been sweeping the horizon with a glass, shouted cheerily, "Land ho! Land ho! Hurrah!" and the cry was echoed simultaneously from stem to stern, and from the galley to the topgallant yard.
About one hundred and fifty millions of these animalcules would have abundant room in a tumbler of water!" But besides furnishing food to the whale, and, no doubt, to many other of the inhabitants of the deep, those medusae are the cause of the phosphorescent light that sometimes glows on the ocean with resplendent brilliancy. We see this light oftentimes on our own coasts.
... Remove fera monstra, tuaegue Saxificos vultus, quaecunque ea, tolle Medusae. Ovid. Met. In a late Paper I mention'd the Project of an Ingenious Author for the erecting of several Handicraft Prizes to be contended for by our British Artizans, and the Influence they might have towards the Improvement of our several Manufactures.
For the last few days I have been especially occupied with the development of the medusae. In studying the actiniae I have made a striking discovery, and I should be glad if you would communicate it to the Academy in advance of the illustrated paper on the same subject, which I hope soon to send you.
If the means of circulation of matter through different channels is the distinguishing mark of life we must place outside of this definition all the upper classes of the colenterata entirely, with the exception of the medusae, and therefore all the polypi and other plant animals are also to be considered as being outside the class of living creatures.
Thus I came to know that the beautiful phosphoric light, which I had so often admired before, was caused by animals, for I had no doubt that these were of the same kind as the medusae or jelly-fish which are seen in all parts of the world. On the evening of my fourteenth day I was awakened out of a nap into which I had fallen by a loud cry, and starting up I gazed around me.
Well, after a good while, I made bold to ask the young doctor what he had found out. "`I've found, said he, `that the greenness of these seas is in truth caused by uncountable numbers of medusae " "Ha! that's the word," shouted Tom Lokins, "Medoosy, that's wot the captain calls 'em. Heave ahead, Fred."
Navigators have frequently observed large quantities of these medusae floating along with the Gulf Stream; and one sea captain in particular fell in with an extraordinarily large quantity of them, of a very peculiar species, off the coast of Florida.
Besides its other useful and manifold purposes, the Gulf Stream would seem to be one of the great purveyors of food to the whales. Sea-nettles, or medusae, are well known to constitute the principal food of that species of whale which is termed the right whale.
Many scientific travellers have carefully examined this subject, and we believe that all agree in referring this beautiful appearance to the medusae. One gentleman drew a bucketful of water from the sea when it was in this condition, and found, on examining it in a dark place, that the little creatures "could be distinctly seen emitting a bright speck of light.
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