Goldsmith's Natural history : with notes from all the popular treatises that have been issued since the time of Goldsmith ... / [edited] by Henry Innes, with a life of Oliver Goldsmith by George Moir Bussey.
- Oliver Goldsmith
- Date:
- [18??]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Goldsmith's Natural history : with notes from all the popular treatises that have been issued since the time of Goldsmith ... / [edited] by Henry Innes, with a life of Oliver Goldsmith by George Moir Bussey. Source: Wellcome Collection.
775/860 page 399
![as many as its hunger requires. One of these, when put into a basin of water, in which were thirty or forty worms of the libellula kind, each as large as itself, destroyed them all in a few minutes, getting on their b'*cks, and piercing with its trunk through their body. These animals, however, though so formidable to others, are nevertheless themselves greatly overrun with a little kind of louse, about the size of a nit, which very probably repays the injury which the water- scorpion indicts upon others. The water-scorpions live in the water by day; out of which they rise in the dusk of the evening into the air, and so dying from place to place, often betake themselves, in quest of food, to other waters. The insect, before its wings are grown, remains in the place where it was produced ; but when come to its state of perfection, sallies forth in search of a companion of the other sex, in order to continue its noxious posterity.* that very frequently these little animals seem, like many others of tlie animal kingdom, to be aware of the change of weather; and, in- stead of giving warning by their shining brighter at such times tlian they did before, they disappear altogether, no doubt taking refuge from the agitation of the waves by descending to a more secure situation deep in the water. And even when at times, as it no doubt occasionally does happen, the sea in had weather is particularly luminous, it is evidently produced by large medusse. such as the M. pellOcens of Sir J. Banks, and other large animals, and only takes place when tlie gale has already arrived, being nothing mure than a concomitant, not the forerunner, of an agitated sea. From my own ub.servations upon this subject, were 1 to say that it is at ^1 connected with meteorological appear- ances, 1 should be disposed to believe that it is more brilliant and more generally ditl'used over the surface of the water, immediately be- fore or during very light rain, not absolutely during a calm, but when there is only a gen- tle breere at the time. I have frequently ob- served at such times the sea particularly lu- minous, and have also heard it remarked by seamen as a ibrerunner of rain. This, how- ever, like every other prognostic, frequently fails, only showing how little all such prog- nostics are to be attended to. * Portuguese Man-of-War Insect.— By aid of the Magazine of Natural History, we are enabled to present the reader with a figure of this curious creature. The writer of the subsequent description is a Correspondent of the above popular Journal. In Stark’s Elements of Natural History it will be found under the division Radiuta, class Acal^pha: it is the Physalia, or Phy- salis pelagica, of Lamarck. When seen iloating on the surface of the water, the most conspicuous part of. the animal appears to be an oval subtrigonal membrane, inflated with air, having an elevated ridge running along its back like a cock’s comb, strongly marked with indentations, and tinged along the sum- mit of a beautiful rosy hue, the extremities of the inflated bladder being of a fine puqile and violet colour. Underneath the membrane, and nearest to the larger extremity, are at- tached numerous ajipendages; some are very short and thick, while others are very long, many upwards of 30 inches in length. Sk>me are straight, others twisted, and a few are spirally twisted, like the spring-wire of a bell. These appendages, according to Cuvier, form the suckers, tentacula, and ovaries (egg-bags), and are of a beautiful violet and blue colour, intermixed with purple. The smaller ex- tremity is free, and the animal possesses the power of lifting it out of the water altogether; raising it aloft into the air, while the larger one is kept floating on tlie water by the weight of the fleshy appendages already men- tioned. They have the power of contracting and dilating their membranous bag at plea- sure, and no doubt, by trimming it to the wind, make it act the part of a sail to propel themselves through the water. •• They are very often to be met with at sea,” says Sir Hans Sloane ; “ and seamen do affirm that they have very great skill in sailing, managing their bladder or sail with judgment fur this pur]K)se, according to the difierent winds anj courses.” (^Sloane's k'oyage to •lamaica, vol. i. p. 7.) Upon attentively examining the narrow or free extremity of the bladder, a small, round aperture is perceptible, surrounded by a circular zone of fibres, of a beautiful red colour, like the muscular fibres of the iris of the eye. Out of this small hole, which is not larger than would be sufficient to admit the passage of a very fine bristle, I squeezed the air out of the bladder. It is by this ajier- ture that the animal, it is presumed, expels the air from the bladder, when he wishes to sink under the surface of the water; but whetlier he refills it. by inhaling the air by this aperture, or secrets it from his blood, is not so easily determined. They possess, in a high degree, the stinging quality which has procured for the animals belonging to the Radiata the term sea nettles. They aie alsv endowed with the luminous property whici belongs to so many murine animals; and it is observable, when they have been numerous during the day, that the sea at night has lieen brilliantly illuminated.—Coruesi’onuknt o» THE Magazine of Naturai. History.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29010585_0775.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
