238 ANTIIOZOA IIELIANTHOIDA. 



young may have been swallowed accidentally by the supposititious 

 mother, and being found unfit for digestion are consequently re- 

 jected, quoting in favour of this not very feasible conjecture, an 

 experiment of Dicquemare, who, offering several small individuals 

 to a larger one of a different species, found that it swallowed them 

 readily, " but threw them up again alive within eight, ten, or twelve 

 hours, or even later." Dicquemare himself, although he expresses 

 himself in dubious terms, evidently believed them to be viviparous, 

 having seen several bring forth even in his hand, eight, ten, or 

 twelve young ones like to their parents in all but size, and which 

 immediately affixed themselves, and began to stretch their tentacula 

 as if in quest of prey. Ellis was of the same belief;* and Sir J. G. 

 Daly ell, the best authority on the subject, also says that they are 

 viviparous. " The embryos, one or more, appear first in the tenta- 

 cula, from whence they can be withdrawn and transmitted to others 

 by the parent, and are at last produced by the mouth. In the 

 course of six years, a specimen preserved by the author produced 

 above 276 young ; some pale, and like mere specks, with only eight 

 tentacula ; others florid, and with twenty. They are frequently 

 disgorged along with the half-digested food, thirty-eight appearing 

 thus at a single litter. An embryo extracted artificially from the 

 amputated tip of a tentaculum began to breed in fourteen months, 

 and survived nearly five years. Monstrosities by excess are not 

 uncommon among the young : one produced naturally, consisting of 

 two perfect bodies, and their parts sustained by a single base, exhi- 

 bited embryos in the tentacula at ten months, bred in twelve, and 

 lived above five years. While one body was gorged with food, the 

 other continued ravenous." t — These facts are to be explained on 

 the supposition that the ova have been detained and developed in 

 the interseptal spaces, or even in the stomach, for it is very well 

 ascertained that the creatures are truly oviparous. The ovum, 

 under ordinary circumstances, is recognizable as the young of an 

 Actinia about twenty days from the time of its separation. J It has 

 at first very few tentacula, — from four to twelve, arranged in a 

 single row, but they gradually germinate in greater numbers, and 

 arrange themselves in two or more imperfect circular series : § a fact 



* Phil. Trans. Ivii. 429. 



+ Rep. Brit. Assoc, an. 1834, p. 599 ; and Edin. New Phil. Joum. xvii. p. 411. 



+ Dalyell in Edin. New Phil, Joiim. xxi. p. 89, 90. — For an account of the 

 structure of the ovum by Rathke, see BurdacPs Trait^ de Phj'siologie, torn, iii. 

 p. G5-67. 



§ Dalyell in Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, art. "Animal Flower," p. 132. Tem- 



