Actinia. Z. HELIANTHOIDA. 2J5 



littoral varieties, or such as are alternately submerged and exposed by 

 the recess of the tides, are always strongly warted, generally orange - 

 coloured with dusky blotches, and coated with particles of broken 

 shells, small gravel and pieces of sea-weed, by which means, when 

 contracted, they are detected with difficulty in the recesses or sandy 

 places which they prefer. This foreign covering adheres to the glands 

 W'ith great tenacity, and cannot be removed by any natural causes to 

 which the Actinia is exposed ; but what is surely worthy of our ad- 

 miration, and seems to prove the existence of an instinct even in 

 these lowest creatures, the individuals which are placed in deep water, 

 as if aware they did not require such a mode of concealment, form 

 no extraneous covering, but leave the surface clean, and this acquires 

 then more vivid and varied tints, while at the same time the warts 

 become smaller or disappear. Of these pelagic sorts there are some 

 eiuinently beautiful : one is of a uniform bright scarlet studded over 

 with pale warts like ornamental beads ; another is of a pale sulphur 

 yellow, or greenish with orange-coloured stripes, the oral disk and ve- 

 sicular lobes borrowing the hues of the wild rose ; but they vary in this 

 respect so much that no description can do justice to them or define 

 their limits. 



I have little doubt that all the synonymes quoted under this spe- 

 cies truly belong to it. Gsertner's figure represents it of a more 

 cylindrical shape than I have ever seen it assume, and with only a 

 single row of rather slender tentacula, which, he says, vary from 18 

 to 36 in number. Hence the figure we may suppose to have been 

 taken from a young individual, which is certainly the case in the Ac- 

 tinia monile of Mr Templeton. 



Dicquemare says — " Of all the kinds of sea-anemonies, I would 

 prefer this for the table ; being boiled some time in sea water, they 

 acquire a firm and palatable consistence, and may then be eaten with 

 any kind of sauce. They are of an inviting appearance, of a light 

 shivering texture, and of a soft white and reddish hue. Their smell 

 is not unlike that of a warm crab or lobster." Phil. Trans, abridg. 

 xiii. 637. 



Ehrenberg divides the family Actiniidse into two sections, — the 

 second embracing such genera as have glandular pores in the skin. 

 The genus '* Cribrina," in this section, has Act. gemmacea for its 

 type, which is thus far sundered from the species with which it is 

 here associated. Ehrenberg seems to me to have been peculiarly 

 unfortunate in his choice of a character, for if I have studied the ani- 

 mal rightly, so far from being of sectional or generic value, it serves 

 not even to discriminate a species, which may have its smooth and 



