Heat in Mid-August—Early Planting and Sowing -
Over-ripening of Crops—Medusse— Stinging Jelly-Fish—The amount of solid
matter in Jelly-Fish.
T he unprecedented
heat of mid-August lasted with us here precisely a fortnight [September
1876], Beginning on the 10th, it continued with little intermission or
mitigation till the 24th, when the wind suddenly chopped round to the
south-west, our rainy quarter; the sky assumed the threatening aspect,
an ugly interminglement of black and dark grey, with which we are only
too familiar, and rain began to fall with that dour,
persistent pattering, and aimless horizontal drift, which sufficed to
convince the most careless and unobservant student of our "West
Highlands meteorology that it was neither a thunder-plump nor a mere
passing shower, but a determined and regular "set-in" of probably some
days, or, it might be, of some weeks' duration. The last ten days have
accordingly been more or less wet, and as the corn over the country
generally is about ripe for scythe and sickle, many an anxious eye is
cast heavenwards with wistfullest glance, morning, noon, and night, in
hopes of a change of wind and a return to fair weather. We are about
tired of advocating the advantages of early sowing to our friends of the
West Highlands. We are content with once again stating the fact that,
having sown early, our own corn was cut in ripe and good condition on
the 17th August, and safely housed without having once been touched by a
single drop of rain. A single armful of such well-preserved provender is
worth a whole back-burden of the washed-out and sapless stuff that
usually goes by the name of "wintering" and "winter keep" in this and
the neighbouring districts. It is proper to say, however, that, though
so difficult to move to an earlier date in corn-sowing, our people here
have of recent years been more amenable to good advice in the matter of
potato culture. This year a large breadth of potatoes was planted in
March and early April, and the consequence is that these are now nearly
ripe, and of the best quality, stronger too, and in every way better
able to resist the attacks of blight—absit
omen!—should
it unfortunately come their way, as we hope it won't; while the still
green and half-ripe tubers of later plantings would probably suffer
largely under a similar visitation. Not even when it is quite ready for
the sickle do people generally cut their corn timeously. Too often it is
allowed to ripen overmuch, till the straw is over-dry and sapless,
besides the inevitable loss of grain in the stooking and subsequent
ingathering. It is very much the same with hay. As a rule, it is left
too long uncut, by which its quality is sadly deteriorated. Nor is this
mistake in haymaking peculiar to the west coast, but much too common
over all the country. Even in Morayshire and about Inverness the hay
crop is, as a rule, allowed to ripen over-much. If it were cut ten days
or a fortnight earlier it would weigh more, smell sweeter, be more
nutritious, and better every way than under the present system, which
allows it not merely to ripen, but to more than ripen, to wither up and
lose most of its sap and seed before it is cut and secured. It may,
perhaps, be laid down as an axiom that root crops cannot be allowed to
ripen over-much; cereals and grasses most certainly may.
Cavill's recent attempt to swim the Channel, in rivalry
of Captain "Webb's feat, was a failure, and had medical aid not been so
opportunely at hand when the swimmer, comatose and unconscious, was
lifted out of the water by his friends in the attendant lugger, the
venture, noteworthy, though unsuccessful, for its pluck and daring,
would probably have resulted in something far more serious than mere
failure. In accounting for his non-success, and his state of extreme
exhaustion when taken out of the water, Cavill largely blames the
jelly-fish or sea-blubber, through perfect shoals of which he had once
and again to force his way; and although he wore a thin jersey, which
must have been some protection, enough of the bare skin was exposed to
contact with the cold, clammy, slimy Medusce, to
make him exceedingly nervous and generally uncomfortable throughout a
full third of the distance covered. The number of these Medusse to be
met with at certain seasons all along the British shores is enormous;
and towards the close of summer and early autumn they are more abundant,
perhaps, in our western lochs than anywhere else. Looking over the
boat's side on a fine day, we have seen them in our own Loch Leven in
incalculable numbers, thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa, or the
stars in the Milky Way—of all shapes and sizes too, swimming about
aimlessly by a slow but constant contraction and expansion, regular as
the beat of a pendulum, of their umbrella-like bodies, fringed like a
lady's parasol, with a close edging of' thread-like cilia, and
frequently having long, pendulous tentaculse attached to their under
surface, giving the healthy animal, when busy in its proper element, a
very curious appearance. Though the jelly-fish is in constant motion—in
perpetual motion, so to speak, for it never rests, that ever we could
discover, either by night or day—its progress in the sea is rather due
to the set of the wind and the tide-drift than its own exertions, its
incessant labours of contraction and expansion being performed not so
much for the purpose of shifting its place in the water, as for the
purpose of grasping and sucking in at each contraction such microscopic
organisms as form its food. It is true that in a calm and tideless sea
its motions cause it to be carried in the direction of the contracting
beat an inch or thereby at a time, but this progress is clearly
accidental and unintentional, so far as it is concerned, the great
object of the incessant contraction and expansion being, as we have
said, not so much change of place as the capture and insuction of its
ordinary food. The Medusae swim at all depths in the sea, but as a rule
they seem to prefer feeding within a fathom or two of the surface,
particularly if the sun is bright and the sea is perfectly calm. The
mouth of the Medusa is in the centre of the under concave surface, and
the animal's modus
operandi in
sweeping in its food towards this orifice is not difficult to
understand. Stretch out your right hand, with its back or knuckle
surface uppermost. First expand the hand and fingers to their full
extent, then contract so as almost, but not quite, to close the hand,
not quickly, but very firmly and decidedly. Continue in this way opening
out and closing the hand and fingers, not quite so fast as a second's
beating pendulum oscillates, and you have the perfect analogue, or more
properly the homologue, of the Medusa's action. If you can fancy an
orifice or mouth in the centre of your palm, and your fingers to be the
fringe surrounding the jelly-fish disc, and if you perform the action
indicated in a tub or pool of water, into which a little flour or fine
oatmeal has been thrown to represent the animalculae forming the
Medusa's food, so much the better: you will at once understand how the
animalculae and food particles are swept and sucked in by the current
created towards the animal's mouth, or gastric cavity, as it might be
more properly termed. When one or more of these animals comes in contact
with a swimmer's skin, the sensation is anything but agreeable, a
feeling of indescribable loathing and horror being engendered by the
touch of the cold, gelatinous mass, that you are yet conscious is not
dead matter, but an animated pulsating organism. But though contact with
the ordinary Medusa is bad enough, there is another species of
jelly-fish not uncommon in British waters at certain seasons, accidental
contact with which is a very serious matter indeed. These are known to
naturalists as Acaleplue,
from a Greek word signifying a nettle. They are not so numerous on our
shores as the true Medusa, hut they grow to a much larger size, some of
them measuring eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-four inches across the
disc, and thick and heavy in proportion, large enough, when fresh from
the sea, to fill a tub of considerable size. If one of these wretches
comes in contact with the human skin, it is found to sting like a
nettle, only much more severely, and hence its scientific name. A
swimmer stung by contact with an acaleph feels not only the cruel
smarting of the nettle-like and burning stinging, but he is in a few
minutes frequently overcome by a feeling of languor and sickness, that
lasts for a considerable time, and is sometimes only relieved by a
violent fit of vomiting, just as if he was a sufferer for the moment
under the influence of a powerful emetic. "We have more than once been
stung by an acaleph, and can speak feelingly on
the subject. Only last season a boy on the opposite coast of Appin was,
while bathing, so severely stung by one or more acalephs that he was for
some days confined to bed, seriously ill, and under medical treatment.
This power of stinging seems to be a wise provision in the economy of
the animal, for the purpose of rendering helpless and numbing its prey,
to make them easier of capture and subsequent deglutition, just as the Mysotis, or
electric eel, with like purpose puts to a very important and practical
use its electro-battery shocks. The true acaleph may generally be
distinguished from the more harmless jelly-fish by having a good deal of
colour in its tissues, being striated with red, pink, and pale green,
which gives it a very beautiful appearance as under the bright sunlight
it floats about, contracting and expanding with the regularity of a
pendulum beat, near the surface of the calm, unruffled sea. The amount
of solid matter in a jelly-fish of any kind, however large, is amazingly
small. Within a thin, filmy skin, they are entirely made up of water,
with a few threads spider-net-wise running through it to keep it in
shape, like the ropes on which was stretched the immense velarium of
an ancient amphitheatre. After a summer storm we have seen the sea-heach
covered with a considerable wall of jelly-fish that had been cast
ashore, a yard in breadth, perhaps, and a couple of feet in height; and
before the evening of the next day, during which the sun shone out hot
and clear, the whole had melted away like so much snow, leaving only a
thin film of gelatinous matter, which, if gathered together in a single
heap, wouldn't have filled our venerable but still useful "Glachnacuddin" hat.
There is a good story told of a farmer, somewhere from the altitudes of Druimuachdar, who
took some land by the sea, not a hundred yards from our own
neighbourhood. One morning he saw the beach covered with a deep ring of
jellyfish as above, and being an eident body,
he got his horses and carts in order, and commenced to cart them afield,
in the belief that they could not but prove excellent manure for the
land. After working at the job nearly half a day, a naturalist, who
chanced to pass the way, astonished the farmer not a little by assuring
him that some hogsheads of sea-water, and
a single pocket-handkerchief full of manure from
the nearest dung-heap, would fitly and fully represent all that he had
on his land in the fifty odd carts of jelly-fish that had cost him so
much labour ! The story goes on to say that that particular farmer
looked askance at jelly-fish ever afterwards, and didn't care much to
have their natural history discussed in his presence at kirk or market,
at bridal or funeral, all his life long. The fact is, that a mass of
jelly-fish sufficient to load the " Great Eastern " wouldn't probably
yield a peat creelful of solid serviceable matter for any purpose or
purposes whatever. The jelly-fish is known to the Gaels of the Hebrides
and West Coast by a curious name—Sgeith
an R6in for
the smaller ones, that is, the seal's vomit, and for the larger ones, Sgeith
na Muicamara, the
whale's vomit, in the absurd belief that they were the vomits
respectively of the uncanny Sealchs, of
whom the Highlander had always a superstitious dread, and of the largest
of marine monsters, after they had gorged themselves to repletion on a
shoal of extra-oleaginous herring or mackerel. These names for the
jelly-fish are doubtless absurd enough, and yet, in defence of the good
old Gaelic name-givers, let us observe that they are not a whit more
absurd than the Caprimulgus (goatsucker)
of Linnaeus as applied to the night-jar, or the Frugilegus (corn-gatherer)
of the same high authority as applied to the common rook. |