njectured that, uninjured and
stretched to their utmost length, they could not have been less than
three hundred feet long. The great shield-like body of the animal was
found to be over nine feet in diameter, two feet more than the largest
heretofore known, which is described by Professor Agassiz, who measured
it while it was floating lazily on the surface of the water. This
specimen was so large that the professor feared his account of it might
be considered exaggerated.

The monster when alive looks as much as anything like an immense
circular plate or dish of glass floating bottom upward on the sea. The
color of the body is a brownish-red, with a rather broad margin of
creamy white edged with blue, while the tentacles--pink, blue, brown,
and purple--hang like skeins of colored glass threads from the under
parts of the shield. Very beautiful are these threads, glistening with a
silky lustre beneath the waves, but they are extremely dangerous, too.
Each of these threads, in fact, contains myriads of cells, in each one
of which is coiled up, ready to be darted forth on contact with any
living substance, a whip-like lance finer than the finest cambric
needle. Millions of these stings entering at once cause a sensation like
that of a violent electric shock, paralyzing and often killing the
creature with which they come in contact.

[Illustration: HYDROID FROM WHICH THE JELLY-FISH GROWS.]

This gigantic creature grows from the small one, called a hydroid,
represented in the small cut. You see the hydroid does not in the least
resemble a jelly-fish. Perhaps the strangest thing about these wonderful
lumps of animated jelly is that their young are not jelly-fishes at all,
but an entirely different sort of animals. Sometimes they take the shape
of a pile of platters, which finally separate and become individual
jelly-fish; sometimes they grow into living plants which bear eggs like
fruit, which eggs hatch and finally become jelly-fish. No fairy tale can
afford instances of transformations so surprising as do these
animals--more like animated bubbles than anything else to which they can
be compared; transparent and exhibiting the most brilliant colors, they
dissolve away when stranded so completely that no trace of their
substance seems to remain.

[Illustration: THE FIRST DROP OF BITTERNESS.]

THE FIRST DROP OF BITTERNESS.

Come, little one, open your mouth!
I know it is bitter to drink;
But if you'll s