216 



PENTACT^E. 



clusters of very minute papillae adhere, which make them 

 exactly resemble small branches of trees covered with 

 their leaves. These leaves or papilla? not only contribute 

 to the beauty of the feelers, being of a pale yellow, mixed 

 with a shining white, like silver, but they also render the 

 feelers more useful to the animal in filling up the inter- 

 stices between them, through which smaller insects else 

 must pass without being perceived by the animal whose 

 natural food they are." " This polype seems to live at the 

 bottom of the sea, distant from the land. I met with it 

 but once upon the shore between Penzance and Newland, 

 where it was thrown up by the sea inclosed in a large 

 hollow root of the Fucus patmatus? 1 



Gaertner's inference about its habitat is not correct. 

 The circumstances under which he found it would indicate 

 its locality to be the region of Laminaria\ Pennant 

 dredged it at Weymouth, and Montagu on the coast of 

 Devonshire. I have dredged many of all varieties in the 

 Frith of Clyde. In the Gair Loch it is abundant in about 

 ten fathoms water. 



Abroad it inhabits the coasts of France and of Norway. 



