Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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We
Found, Beside The Medusa Aurita Of Baster, And The Medusa Pelagica
Of Bosc With Eight Tentacula (Pelagia Denticulata, Peron), A Third
Species Which Resembles The Medusa Hysocella, And Which Vandelli
Found At The Mouth Of The Tagus.
It is known by its brownish-yellow
colour, and by its tentacula, which are longer than the body.
Several of these sea-nettles were four inches in diameter:
Their
reflection was almost metallic: their changeable colours of violet
and purple formed an agreeable contrast with the azure tint of the
ocean.
In the midst of these medusas M. Bonpland observed bundles of
Dagysa notata, a mollusc of a singular construction, which Sir
Joseph Banks first discovered. These are small gelatinous bags,
transparent, cylindrical, sometimes polygonal, thirteen lines long
and two or three in diameter. These bags are open at both ends. In
one of these openings, we observed a hyaline bladder, marked with a
yellow spot. The cylinders lie longitudinally, one against another,
like the cells of a bee-hive, and form chaplets from six to eight
inches in length. I tried the galvanic electricity on these
mollusca, but it produced no contraction. It appears that the genus
dagysa, formed at the time of Cook's first voyage, belongs to the
salpas (biphores of Bruguiere), to which M. Cuvier joins the Thalia
of Brown, and the Tethys vagina of Tilesius. The salpas journey
also by groups, joining in chaplets, as we have observed of the
dagysa.
On the morning of the 13th of June, in 34 degrees 33 minutes
latitude, we saw large masses of this last mollusc in its passage,
the sea being perfectly calm.
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