158 Harvey's syrinx. 



with several rows of short bristles, as if it had omitted 

 to shave its beard since the day before, and when these 

 are all everted, out pops a dense taft of white tenta- 

 cula, like those of a half-expanded Actinia. These 

 are no sooner exposed then they are infolded again, 

 and the process of inversion runs rapidly down to 

 the base of the proboscis, like the drawing of a 

 stocking or a glove-finger within itself ; the tentacles, 

 however, during the brief moment they remain out, 

 are kept in quick motion, wriggling and twisting 

 about among themselves. The whole proboscis is of 

 a dull dirty brown, as is the abruptly-pointed tail ; 

 they are both reticulated, being marked with coarse 

 annular and longitudinal wrinkles : this texture, as 

 well as the colour, is separated abruptly from that 

 of the body. The latter is pure white, of a satiny 

 lustre, smooth to the eye, but examined with a lens 

 seen to be marked with innumerable fine punctures, 

 oblong in form and connected with each other by 

 very delicate transverse lines. The posterior half of 

 the brown tail of this Syrinx was studded with little 

 projections which I at first thought were the viscera 

 forced through pores in the skin, but which I 

 presently discovered, to my surprise, to be a colony 

 of PedicellincB, (of the species Belgica, I believe) 

 which had chosen this strange locality to spread their 

 mat upon, surely without asking leave of the tail's 

 owner. The gemmule having once fixed itself, was 

 a tenant for life, and the various wanderings of the 

 Syrinx could not displace its parasitic friend, but 

 only carry it about, Avhile it proceeded to rear its 

 family. 



