214 F. A. BEDWELL ON A METHOD OF EXAMINING 



left hand, an annulus, in the centre of which will be a confused heap 

 of convoluted band (craspedum). This, with its so-called mesen- 

 tery, must be cut away freely, but carefully, and when this is done 

 the septa will be disclosed. They must be kept washed with a little 

 very weak solution of acid and water, to stay the accumulation of 

 mucus, and in as much as the muscular contraction of the parts does 

 not, as a rule, set in for three or four minutes, it will be found, 

 if the specimen is kept on the finger, it can be examined in detail, 

 with the help of a watchmaker's glass in the eye, and a camel's 

 hair brush held in the hand to turn over the septa. 



The details of the different portions of the interior organization 

 have, with one exception to be presently noticed, been so frequently 

 figured on a gradually extending scale by Spix* (1809), 

 Teale (1834), Wagnerf (1835), Frey and Leuckart (1847), 

 CobboldJ (1853), and Gosse (I860), that it would be wholly unne- 

 cessary for me to allude further to the subject, but for the fact that, 

 owing no doubt to the great difficulties of dissection, the account and 

 list of the organs is still incomplete, and also, that notwithstanding 

 all the labour spent upon the subject, there really does not, so far as 

 I know, exist a complete diagrammatic picture in perspective of the 

 interior organisation of the animal. The drawings of Spix, 

 Wagner, Sharpey§, and Rymer Jones|| for instance are all, I should 

 say, on too small a scale, and also attempt too much, while those of 

 Teale, of Frey and Leuckart (adopted by Professor Huxley in his 

 work on Invertebrates), and an admirable one in Mr. Lewes's " Sea- 

 side Studies" (adopted in Green's " Ccelenterata ") are perfect as 

 far as they go, but are, in fact, taken from special varieties, and, more- 

 over, they do not pretend to give the general scheme of the interior. 



Fig. 1, plate XI, is an attempt to supply this deficiency. To try 

 to represent in a diagram, organs or eggs in situ, would tend to 

 confuse, and would likewise be injudicious, for while the diagram 

 here given,^[ so far as it goes, is correct as a representative skeleton, 

 for all the Actinidce on which I could verify it, namely, Actinia 



* " Annales du Museum," xiii., 1809, plate 33. These plates are repeated 

 in Knight's " Animated Nature." 



f Weizmann s "Archives," 1835, Vol. I., pi. 2, pps. 215-219. 



% "Annals Nat. Hist.," 2nd Ser., Vol. II , 1«53, p. 121. 



§ " Cyclopaedia Anat. et Phys.," I., p. 614 (1835-6). Article on " Cilia." 

 This is the well-known diagram copied into so many modern books. 



II "Animal Kingdom," 1841, p. 41. 



% I have only seen the circular openings from septum to septum in 

 A. dianthus and Anthea cereus. 



