tg^-' CotGAN. — Ccrianthus ami Adavisia on Dublin Coast. iQi 



aspect of a gephyrean worm. It was a buff-coloured 

 cylinder about one inch in length and a quarter of an inch 

 in diameter, and appeared to have been crushed and in- 

 jured in the dredge. After a hasty examination the supposed 

 gephyrean was transferred to a tube of fresh sea-water. 

 Here it revived and next day was found to have greatly 

 changed its form. It was extended to fully two inches in 

 length, one end was swollen into a bulb or knob, and a 

 confused mass of tentacles appearing at the opposite end 

 showed with sufficient clearness that the animal was a sea- 

 anemone and not a gephyrean. 



Throughout the three weeks during which the animal 

 lived in captivity, it continued to change its form by slowly 

 propagated waves of expansion. The body was perfectly 

 flaccid. When lifted on a needle it hung inert across it 

 like a dead earth-worm, and in the dish of sea water it 

 insinuated itself with perfect ease through the narrow 

 interstices between the small stones strewn over the bottom. 

 From time to time the tentacles were fully displayed, but 

 it was only after many unsuccessful attempts that I secured 

 a favourable opportunity of examining the base or aboral 

 extremity. This was seen to be conspicuously perforated, 

 the orifice being placed excentrically, and this feature taken 

 together with the form and colour of the animal and of its 

 tentacles, rich maroon in the inner smaller rows and whitish 

 with red -brown base in the outer and longer row, placed 

 beyond doubt the identity of the animal with Gosse's 

 Cerianthus Lloydii. The tube which usually invests this 

 species had evidently been torn off in the dredge ; but a 

 few days after capture an incipient tube or case of whitish 

 mucous matter was observed to be forming around the 

 animal, as described by Gosse in his " British Sea-Anemones," 

 p. 269. Hitherto this species appears to be on record in 

 Irish waters, only for the west and south-west of the island, 

 from Smerwick, Valentia, Clare Island, Killery Harbour 

 and Bofin Harbour.^ 



^See Miss Jane Stephens, List of Irish Coelenterata, R.I. A. Proc. 

 XXV. B. p. 25, 1905, and Clare Island Survey, part 58, Coelenterata, i?./..(4. 

 Proc, xxxi., 1912, 



