FRAGMENTS BECOMING ANIMALS. 183 



it had become a perfect Actinia, with a single row of 

 beautiful long tentacles. From the foot of this small 

 Actinia he cut two other exceedingly minute slips, 

 which also became Actinias ; and from the foot of the 

 original Actinia he also separated, at various times, 

 fourteen other slips, all of which became developed as 

 the first. The author stated that this case of gemnii- 

 parous increase was an instance of the development of 

 a perfect and very complicated organism, from a minute 

 fragment of one similar to itself, all that was essential 

 to the process being apparently the existence of a por- 

 tion of each of the three elemental tissues of the ori- 

 ginal, the dermal, the muscular, and the mucous tissue, 

 — the last being represented by the lining membrane 

 of the general cavity. And it appeared to be analogous 

 to the instance of gemmation from the water-vascular 

 system observed by the late Professor Edward Forbes, 

 in Sarsia prolifera, in which animal the young me- 

 dusae pullulated forth from the hollow bulbs which 

 supported the tentacles." 



It should be borne in mind, however, that the Ac- 

 tiniae are far less capable of reproduction from frag- 

 ments than the fresh- water Polypes are. Delle Chiaje, 

 indeed, emphatically denies that they can do more than 

 reproduce their tentacles.* This, as we have just seen, 

 is not the case ; and it is somewhat curious that Delle 

 Chiaje should confine the reproductive power to the 

 tentacles, when we remember that, according to Owen, 



* Delle Chiaje : Descrizione e notomia degli animali inverteb. delta 

 Sicilia, iv. p. 130. 



