THE PEDICELLINA. 263 



This suspicion grew into a conviction ; and, after bestow- 

 ing a proper Greek name on it, I made several j^repa- 

 rations to show admiring friends. The animal springs 

 from a creeping stem, and stands about the tenth of an 

 inch in heia'ht, or less. Each individual is comiected 

 with every other by this creeping stem, and consists of 

 a vase-shaped body, or cup, supported on a stalk. When 

 the animal is fidly expanded, it unrolls the edge of its 

 cup into a circle of twelve or fourteen ciliated tentacles, 

 curled downwards like the young fern-leaf, or like the 

 handle of a Greek vase. These tentacles are, as I said, 

 cut out of the edge of the cup, not enclosed in the cup, 

 like those of a polype. The alimentary canal is a long 

 convoluted tube ; the cavity is lined with cilia, and at 

 the bottom there is a mass of yellowish granules (hepatic 

 cells ?) and occasionally the food may be observed rotat- 

 ing, as if on an axis. 



Some weeks after convincing myself the animal was 

 new, I dredged between the coasts of Jersey and Brit- 

 tany a small Pecten, on the shell of which, besides other 

 animals, there was my new friend in great activity, 

 and of much larger size than the one got at Scilly. 

 It was then I learned that my friend had abeady been 

 described — that, in short, it was the Pedicellina of 

 Sars, or at any rate differed therefrom only in such 

 unimportant particulars (such as the retractility of the 

 tentacles) as would at the most constitute a distinction 

 of species. I made this out by studying the develop- 

 ment of the animal. In Owen's Lectures there is a 

 diagram of the embryonic phases of Pedicellina, and 



