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Its general aspect may be compared to a string of Lilac-blossoms, such as the children make for necklaces in the spring, in which the base of one blossom is inserted into the upper side of the one below it. In this condition our Jelly-Fish has been called Strobila.
How small and unimportant is the difference between the changes which a caterpillar undergoes before becoming a moth, and those of a strobila before becoming a medusa. But in the case of the strobila we say that it is not changed, but dies, and is no part of the personality of the medusa.
A medusa begets a ciliated larva, the larva begets a polyp, the polyp begets a strobila, and the strobila begets a medusa again; the cycle of reproduction being completed in the fourth generation. A frog lays an egg, which egg becomes a tadpole; the tadpole, after more or fewer intermediate stages, becomes a frog.
It is not strange that the relation between the various phases of this extraordinary series of metamorphoses, so different from each other in their external aspects, should not have been recognized at once, and that this singular Acaleph should have been called Scyphostoma in its simple Hydroid condition, Strobila after the transverse division of the body had taken place, Ephyra in the first stages of its free existence, and Aurelia in its adult state, being thus described as four distinct animals.
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