190 Z. ASTEROIDA. Alcyonium. 



The ova are placed in tbe polype-tixbes ; they are white at first, 

 but ultimately become of a scarlet colour, opake, globular, and about 

 the size of a grain of sand. Each ovum is filled with a mass of ex- 

 tremely minute pellucid granules, and is ultimately discharged through 

 the mouth. They seem to be produced in spring and summer, for 

 in June and July I have seen many specimens with not more than 

 three or five polypes developed, and these are as large and perfect as 

 the polypes of the oldest specimens. 



Dr Fleming is of opinion, that the Alcyonium lobatum of La- 

 mouroux, whose figure I have quoted without any mark of doubt, is a 

 perfectly distinct species, because its tentacula " are sub-cylindrical, 

 rounded at the extremity, and covered above and on the margin with 

 blunt tubercles;" whereas of the British Alcyonium "the tentacula 

 in Ellis's figures (and, having compared these with nature, we can 

 pronounce on their accm'acy,) are pinnate and pointed." But of 

 these figures of Ellis's, it may be observed that the one he has given 

 in his essay on Corallines * is very unlike the figure of the same 

 parts in his Nat. Hist, of Zoophytes ; and 1 must acknowledge that 

 neither of them correspond with what 1 have myself seen. When a 

 specimen of Alcyonium digitatum is placed in a vessel of sea-water, 

 the polypes protrude themselves amazingly, and extend their tenta- 

 cula, which are thick, obtuse, grooved along the centre, and not long- 

 er than the diameter of the oral disk, being in fact very like what 

 they are represented to be by Lamouroux ; but when these organs 

 are removed and slightly pressed between plates of glass, they be- 

 come so much elongated that 1 can readily believe they may, when 

 the animal is active and in its native site, assume the shape and ap- 

 pearance of Ellis's latter figure. And I am thus drawn to the con- 

 clusion that the differences in the different figures will not justify the 

 establishment of distinct species, but are to be attributed to the ani- 

 mal being- in different states when observed, — a conclusion which a 

 writer in the Encyclop. Method. Supp. p. 497, has also come to. 

 *' Les figures donnees par Ellis, Spix et Lamouroux ne se ressemblent 

 guire; je pense neammoins que cette difference ne peut etre rapportee 

 a aucune inexactitude, mais depend de I'etat du polype a I'instant ou 

 il a ete dessine." 



The Alcyonium rubrum oi Mailer defined to be ^^ crust aceum, 

 molle, miniatmn, punctis sparsis saturatiorihus," — Zool. Dan. prod. 

 255, no. 3081, — is, moreover, surely nothing else but this species in 

 its primary crustaceous condition, and of a reddish-orange colour, as 



* This figure it appears, was taken from specimens which had been immers- 

 ed in spirits. Introd. to Corall. p. xii. 



