AcTiNi/E, Z. HELIANTHOIDA. 227 



ing- thus at a single litter. An embryo extracted artiricially from the 

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

 survived nearly five years. Monstrosities by excess are not uncom- 

 mon among the young : one produced naturally, consisting of two 

 perfect bodies, and their parts sustained by a single base, exhibited 

 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."* These facts are to be explained on the siip- 

 position that the ova have been detained and developed in the inter- 

 septal spaces, for it is very well ascertained that the creatures are 

 truly oviparous. The ovum, under oi'dinary circumstances, is recog- 

 nizable as the young of an Actinia about twenty days from the 



Fig. 34. 



time of its separation, f It has at first very few tentacula, — from 

 four to twelve, arranged in a single row, but they gradually germi- 

 nate in greater numbers, and arrange themselves in two or more im- 

 perfect circular series ;J — a fact which strikingly illustrates the futili- 

 ty of that classification which mainly rests the distinction of its ge- 

 nera upon the number of these circles. § 



The Actiniae are very patient of injuries, and rival the Hydra in 

 their reproductive powers. They may be kept without food for up- 

 wards of a year ; they may be immersed in water hot enough to 

 blister their skin, or frozen in a mass of ice and again thawed ; and 

 they may be placed within the exhausted receiver of the air pump, 

 without being deprived of life, or disabled from resuming their usu- 

 al functions when placed in a favourable situation. If the tenta- 

 cula are clipped off they soon begin to bud anew, and if again cut away 

 they grow again, so that " it seems these reproductions might ex- 

 tend as far, or be as often repeated as patience and curiosity would 

 admit." If cut transversely through the middle, the lower portion of 



• Rep. Brit. Assoc, an. 1834, p. 599 ; and Edin. New Phil. Journ. xvii. 

 p. 411. 



f Dalyell in Edin. New Phil. Journ. xxi- p. 89, 90. 



\ Dalyell in Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, art. " AnimfU Flower," p. 1.32. Tem- 

 l)leton in Mag. Nat. Hist. ix. 303 ; and Harvey in ibid. n. s. i. p. 474. 



§ Brandt. A Synopsis of his System is given by Blainville. Actiuologic, 

 p. 066. 



