126 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



notices. Mr Tugwell's Manual of the Sea-Anemones 

 usually found on the English Coast is specially- 

 addressed to amateurs, and contains useful information 

 pleasantly conveyed, and coloured plates of rare excel- 

 lence. Of a rigorously scientific character are the 

 two memoirs published by M. HoUard, one " On the 

 anatomy of the Actinia,"* and the other Etudes 

 Zoologiques sur le genre Actinia.-f Nor, although I 

 have not been able to procure it, should MrTeale's paper 

 on the Anatomy of the Act. coriacea in the " Leeds 

 Philosophical Transactions" be forgotten, since it has 

 formed the authority for subsequent writers. Separate 

 points have been treated by Erdl, Quatrefages, Wagner, 

 Kolliker, Leuckart, and others ; but the five works 

 just mentioned are, I believe, all the reliable original 

 sources of information on the structure and habits of 

 the Sea- Anemones ; and they all contradict each other 

 with great freedom, so that the student need not be 

 surprised if he, in turn, is forced to oppose a flat 

 denial to many a positive assertion. In the course of 

 the present pages such flat denials will be frequent. 



It must be assumed at startino^ that the reader 

 knows what a Sea- Anemone is, in aspect at least. No 

 description will avail, in default of direct observation ; 

 even pictures only give an approximate idea ; while 

 to those who have seen neither picture nor animal it 

 will be of little use to declare that the ''Actinia 

 is a fleshy cylinder, attached by one extremity to a 



* Annales des Sciences Nat, 1851, vol. xv. 

 "f Revue et Magazin de Zoologie, 1854. No. 4. 



