ViRGULAKiA. Z. ASTEROIDA. 179 



in sea water, and have observed them at all hours, without once de- 

 tecting them in a vohintary emission of the fiame. It proceeds solely 

 from the polypes themselves, and can only be elicited by mechanical 

 irritations, which have no sooner ceased than the phosphorescence 

 declines and dies away. 



" Spangling the waves with lights as vain 

 As pleasures in this vale of pain, 

 That dazzle as they fade." 



Sir W.Scott. 



13. ViRGULARiA,* Lamarck. 

 Character. — Polype-mass free-, linear-elongate, " support- 

 ing, towards the upper extremity, sessile lunate lobes embracing 

 the stem obliquely, and bearing a row of cells on their margin." 



1. V. uiKXBii.is, stem filiform, with alternate lobes transverse^ 

 ly ridgedr Mr Simmons, f 



Plate XXIV. 

 Pennatiila mirabilis, Lin. Syst. 1322. Mull. Zool. Dan. prod. 255, no- 

 307-t — Zool. Dan. tab. 11, fig. 1-3. Ellis and Soland. Zooph. 63. 

 Sowerhy, Brit. Misc. 51, pi. 25. Turt. Brit. Faun. 217. Jameson in 



Wern. Mem. i. 565. Stew. Elem. ii, 450. Bosc, Vers, iii. 62 



Virgularia mirabilis, Lam. Anim. s. vert- ii. 430, 2de edit. ii. 647. Flem. 

 Brit. Anim. 507. Grant in Edin. Joiirn. of Science, no. 14. Stark, 



Elem. ii. 420. Scirpearia mirabilis, Templeton in Mag. Nat. Hist. ix. 



470 La Virgulaire aailes laches, £laitiv. Actinol. 514, pi. 90, fig. 3. 



Hab. Dredged up by Mr Simmons off Inch-Keith, Sowerhy. Pres- 

 tonpans Bay, Jameson. " On the east and north coast of Scotland, 

 where it is believed by the fishermen to have one end lodged erect in 

 the mud ; in Zetland it is called the Sea-rush," Fleming. Dredged 

 up in Belfast Lough, Templeton. 



" Seems to represent a quill stripped of its feathers. The base 

 looks like a pen in this as in the other species, swelling a little from 

 the end, and then tapering. The upper part is thicker, with alter- 

 nate semicircular pectinated swellings, larger towards the middle, ta- 

 pering upwards, and terminating in a thin bony substance, which 



passes through the whole." Soiverby. " From 6 to 10 inches 



in length." " They perfectly correspond in form and external ap- 

 pearance with the elegant coloured figure given by INIuller. Their 

 axis is calcareous, sohd, white, brittle, flexible, cylindrical, of equal 



* Formed from Virgiila, the diminutive of Virga — a rod. 

 f " A young man who has since fallen a sacrifice to his zeal for Natural His- 

 tory in the West Indies." — Leach- He was, I believe, a native of Edinburgh. 



