It was curious to see them seize on these with their hooked tentaculae and draw them in, whilst the acalepha, or gelatinous animal, contracted and dilated itself with all its might and main, endeavouring to escape.

We saw two or three times very large shoals of porpoises ahead of us, and when we reached the spot where they had been we found the sea quite cleared of the animals with which it was covered in other places, so that we imagined the porpoises must have been feeding on them.

We saw also a whale and a shark today.
Although these little floating animals were so numerous there were but very few of the gelatinous species to be seen, and they were chiefly of the larger sorts.

I saw one of the species (Glaucus) of which I have given a sketch, on the 17th of June.

Like all the animals of this species which we caught to the westward of the Cape it had a red intestinal spot in it; but excepting in its great size it differed in no respect from the others which I had seen: this one was at least a foot in length.
A number of black minute animals were caught, which, at a rapid glance, looked not unlike fleas with long feelers or antennae.
We caught also this day an animal (Salpa) which consisted of a gelatinous transparent bag, having an orifice provided with a valve that opened and closed the orifice at pleasure; there was no other opening to the sac that I could discover; I passed the end of a pencil down it, but although it passed readily through the valve it could not at first pass through the bottom of the gelatinous sac; but I afterwards found that this was an error, and that the pencil could be passed right through the body of the animal, which was provided with a valve at each end.