Sertularia. Z. HYDROIDA. 133 



Hab. Near low- water mark on Fuci. particularly on the stalks of 

 Laminaria digitata. Common on all parts of the British coast. 



Grows in tufts from 2 to 4 inches high. The shoots are slender 

 and neat, filiform, tlexuose or widely zig-zag, always erect, alternate- 

 ly hranched, the branches erect, and, like the first shoot, serrulated 

 with the polype- cells which are exactly opposite, and less everted than 

 is usual to the genus. The outer angle of the aperture of the cell is 

 produced into an acute point, and there is a sharp tooth on each side, 

 which is omitted in the otherwise admirable figure of Ellis, although 

 it could not escape his lyncean eye. * The vesicles are irregularly 

 scattered on the branches, large, smooth, egg-shaped, the top often 

 covered with a sort of rounded operculum : they are produced abun- 

 dantly in the winter season and in spring, when indeed, I think, the 

 ovaries appear on the greater number of this order of corallines. It 

 was from the great resemblance of these vesicular ovaries to the cap- 

 sules of mosses, that the early botanists drew an additional argument 

 in behalf of the vegetability of the corallines themselves ;f and a Dar- 

 winian might be, perhaps, forgiven were he even now to feign how 

 the Nereides stole them from the mossy herbelets of Flora's winter 

 and vernal shews, to deck and gem the arbuscular garnitures of their 

 own coral caves ! J 



The shoots are usually so little waved that Pallas' term " subflex- 

 uosi" is very appropriate, but in the collection of Dr Coldstream there 



* " Zoophytorum lynceus Ellisius," Lin. Syst. 1071. 



f " These vesicles appearing at a certain season of the year, according to the 

 different species of corallines, and then falling off, like the blossoms or seeds of 

 plants, has made some curious persons, who have not had an opportunity of see- 

 ing the animals alive in the vesicles, conclude them to be the seed-vessels of 

 plants ; and into this mistake I was led myself, in the account laid before the 

 Royal Society in 1752. In which account I had taken some pains to point out 

 the great similitude between the vesicles, and denticulated appearance of some 

 of these corallines ; and the tooth-shaped leaves and seed-vessels of some spe- 

 cies of land-mosses, particularly of the Hypnum and Bryum." — Ellis, CoralL In- 

 trod. be. 



\ " Nymphs ! you adorn, in glossy volutes roll'd, 



" The gaudy conch with azure, green, and gold. 



*«*■♦••* 



" You chase the warrior shark, and cumbrous whale, 



" And guard the mermaid in her briny vale j 



" Feed the live petals of her insect-flowers, 



" Her shell-wrack gardens, and her sea-fan bowers ; 



" With ores and gems adorn her coral cell, 



" And drop a pearl in every gaping shell." 



Botanic Garden, Canto iii. 



