Selected and abridged from a series of familiar letters written during seventeen years residence in India FORBES, James Published by for the author by T. Bensley, Bolt Court, White, Cochrane, and Co, 1813 1813 INDIA 1ed Forbes Oriental Memoirs Raj Famous Medusa Man o War Jellyfish James Forbes was an 18th-century British author who, after traveling to India, published a series of letters and illustrations on Indian life, customs, wildlife, and history. This book, Oriental Memoirs contains numerous engravings depicting his discoveries and encounters in India. This work is still one of the best first-hand accounts of pre-British Raj India. Worth noting, the engraving of the jellyfish The Medusa, also known as the Portuguese Man o War, is known to be quite desirable and sought-after. The Portuguese man o' war (Physalia physalis), also known as the man-of-war, is a marine hydrozoan found in the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. It is considered to be the same species as the Pacific man o' war or blue bottle, which is found mainly in the Pacific Ocean. The Portuguese man o' war is the only species in the genus Physalia, which in turn is the only genus in the family Physaliidae. The Portuguese man o' war is a conspicuous member of the neuston, the community of organisms that live at the ocean surface. It has numerous venomous microscopic nematocysts which deliver a painful sting powerful enough to kill fish, and has been known to occasionally kill humans. Although it superficially resembles a jellyfish, the Portuguese man o' war is in fact a siphonophore. Like all siphonophores, it is a colonial organism, made up of many smaller units called zooids. All zooids in a colony are genetically identical, but fulfill specialized functions such as feeding and reproduction, and together allow the colony to operate as a single individual. (Source Wiki.)