Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/300

Rh constriction. But these latter must be described particularly.

Each of the animals, as soon as it had arrived at this stage of its suicidal process, was seen to be wrapped up in a swathing-band of white threads, which, issuing in a bundle from the rupture, soon became involved in inextricable confusion by the writhings and knottings of the animal. The threads were of great length, and closely resembled in appearance white sewing-cotton. The microscope revealed their structure. They were not ciliated, and therefore had no spontaneous motion, in these respects differing from the convoluted filaments of the Actiniæ, to which they bear great affinity. The common texture was composed of a multitude of very minute round granules of hyaline and nearly colourless jelly, about th of an inch in diameter, having no motion when crushed down. In this granular substance were set numerous ova, ranging from th to th of an inch in diameter. These consisted of a hyaline integument, including an opaque brown granular yelk, sometimes nearly filling the interior, at others occupying not more than two thirds of it. Within the yelk in each there was a well-defined, globular, hyaline nucleus. On continued pressure the integument burst with a start and a loud crepitation; the yelk oozed through the rupture, retaining its integrity, though its elastic form changed as it passed through the narrow aperture: the nucleus was also compressible and elastic, escaping entire, a clear globular vesicle.

I was in hopes that this spontaneous protrusion of the egg-tubes was a normal process, and that by