Mr. P. H. Gosse on Sarcodictyon catenata. 279 



'Devonshire Coast/ pi. 3. figs. 3 and 4, as possessed by the 

 spicula of Alcyonium, resembling; " very gnarled branches of oak, 

 with the branchlets broken off, leaving ragged ends." The 

 figure given by Johnston, after Forbes — that of a four-rayed 

 star, with minutely serrated margins — must surely have been a 

 fancy portrait. 



The whole of the expanded polype is transparent and colour- 

 less*, except the stomach, the craspeda of the septa, and the 

 ovaries, which are opake and light red. When the animal is 

 contracted, these parts give their hue to the whole then visible, 

 with the exception of the whitish, pellucid epidermis. 



My specimens were (and are; for they still survive, after nearly 

 three weeks' captivity) by no means " sluggish and shy." They 

 expand very freely in pure water, and remain in full blossom 

 almost the whole of their time. If touched rudely, they withdraw, 

 but do not at all regard the movement of the vessel in which they 

 are kept, nor the pushing hither and thither of the fragment of 

 rock to which they are attached, nor a shock or jar given to the 

 table, nor even a slight touch, — all of which would induce our 

 more coy Anemones to veil their beauties from public gaze. And 

 when they have retired, a very short time — perhaps a quarter of an 

 hour, or less — sees them blossoming again as jauntily as ever. 

 Their manners during expansion are sprightly, as almost every 

 instant one or other of the tentacles, which move quite inde- 

 pendently of each other, is bent inward toward the mouth, or 

 jerked hither or thither, or suddenly shortened, or more slowly 

 lengthened. These organs are usually carried arching outward 

 and upward in sigmoid curves, like the branches of a candela- 

 brum (see fig. a), imparting a most elegant appearance to this 

 beautiful Zoophyte. The pinnae, too, are continually changing 

 their position and figure by their independent contractions; 

 ordinarily they bend downward and outward from the plane of 

 the tentacle. 



After one or two attempts I succeeded in feeding the polypes. 

 The difficulty was in presenting the food in sufficiently minute 

 morsels. I selected the flesh of the earthworm, having found 

 that this is generally agreeable to zoophytic taste, and cut a 

 piece of the integument into very minute atoms. One of these 

 1 then passed down on the point of a needle to the Sarcodictyon, 

 watching it at the same time through a pocket lens. As soon 

 as contact occurred, the tentacle grasped it, took it from the 

 needle-point, and bending inward, passed it to the disk. Here 

 one and another of the tentacles bent in towards it, all of them 



* This is, however, due to distension ; for when partially contracted, the 

 septa, and even the skin of the column and tentacles, are seen to have a 

 slight tinge of the same carneous hue. 



