1/ It's Monday and we continue our abecedary of early modern animals in #lockdownbestiary with the J for #Jellyfish. In the Visboeck of Adriaen Coenen (1579), jellyfish are one of the only animals of the sea that Coenen considered useless and incomprehensible to mankind (78 E 54)

2/ Coenen remarks that #jellyfish are made entirely from water and have no bones. When you place them on dry sand, under a hot summer sun, jellyfish dissolve completely into water. They often appear on the beach during hot summer days, when there is not much wind.

3/ #Jellyfish are specifically bothersome to #fishermen. Coenen writes that they stick to fishing nets like glue and fishermen have to remove them with their bare hands, which turn numb after a while.

Because they sting like nettles, Coenen calls #jellyfish sea nettles ('zee netels'), or ‘quallen’ (slimy blobs) in Dutch. Incidentally, this is the first mention of the word #kwal in the #Dutch language!