30 sagartiad^e. 



(. SteUata. Disk pale buff; a broad darker circle at the commencement 

 of the tentacular border. Tentacles long and pointed ; very pale stone- 

 drab, each varied with pellucid patches, which give a pretty and delicate 

 effect. But what is most peculiar is the alternate depression and elevation 

 of the margin, a kind of frilling, which imparts to the disk a star-like form, 

 usually of seven rays. This is a large and well-marked variety. 



The genus Sagartia was established by me in a Memoir* 

 read before the Linnean Society, March 20th, 1855. I then 

 included in it dianihus, as well as the species to which I 

 now confine it. The character on which I mainly relied 

 in constituting it, appears to me, on maturer consideration, 

 to mark a group of higher value than that of a genus ; and 

 I have accordingly used it to characterise a family. Hence 

 it became necessary to make a fresh diagnosis of the genus, 

 which, though large, appears a very natural one. The 

 name I have chosen alludes to the peculiar mode of dis- 

 abling their prey, by means of missile cords, which is 

 possessed pre-eminently by the species of this group, re- 

 calling to my mind a graphic passage in the writings of 

 the Father of History. In the army of Xerxes, he says, — 

 " there was a certain race called Sagartians. The mode of 

 fighting practised by these men was this : — when they 

 engaged an enemy, they threw out a rope with a noose at 

 the end ; whatever any one caught, whether horse or man, 

 he dragged towards himself, and those that were entangled 

 in the coils were speedily put to death." f 



The specific appellation of the present subject is the 

 botanic name of a favourite flower, — the modest Daisy ; — 

 bellis, from hellus, pretty. 



Though the Daisy Anemone is, as I have shown, subject 

 to considerable variety, and has no one very strongly 



* " Description of Peachia hastata, &c." Linn. Trans, xxi. 267. 

 t Herodotus, vii. 85. 



