They are transparent fungi, open umbrellas of glass that advance by means of their contractions.

From the inner center of their dome hangs a tube equally transparent and gelatinous,--the mouth of the animal.

Long filaments depend from the edges of their circular forms, sensitive tentacles that at the same time maintain their floating equilibrium.
These fragile beings, that appear to belong to an enchanted fauna, white as rock crystal with soft borders of rose color or violet, sting like nettles and defend themselves by their fiery touch.

Some subtle and colorless parasols were living here in the tank under the protection of a second enclosure of crystal, and their mucous mistiness scarcely showed itself within this bell-shaped glass except as a pale line of blue vapor.
Below these transparent and ethereal forms that burn whatever they touch, venturing to capture prey much larger than themselves, were grouped as in gardens the so-called "flower of blood," the red coral, and especially the star-fish, forming with their corolla an orange-colored ring.
The captain had seen these stony vegetations, like submerged groves, in the depths of the Dead Sea and also in the southern seas.

He had sailed over them under the illusion that through the bluish depths of the ocean were circulating broad rivers of blood.
The _oseznos_ (bear-cubs) and the star-fish were slowly waving the forms that had given rise to their names, secreting poisons in order to paralyze their victims, contracting themselves until they formed a ball of lances that grasped their prey in a deadly embrace or cut it with the bony knives of their radiating body.