ACTINIA. * 209 



consequence, the young are sometimes also disgorged along with it. The 

 specimen represented Plate XLV. having had a copious meal of an em- 

 bryo skate, taken from the capsule, retained the food during twenty-four 

 hours, when it was rejected, together with a numerous brood of thirty- 

 eight young Actiniae, some of them very large. 



On a similar occurrence, rejecting the digested food, a different speci- 

 men disgorged fourteen animated beings, after having been ten months in my 

 possession, and having been previously sufficiently prolific of progeny in 

 maturity. 



Six of the fourteen proving to be such corpuscula as above specified, 

 they were carefully separated, committed to various vessels, and set apart 

 for more attentive investigation. 



They differed in nothing of importance from those extracted arti- 

 ficially from the tentacula. All were very minute, and they continued so 

 for some time. Four were spherical : two consisted of two spheres united, 

 exhibiting motions peculiar to their form, while the courses pursued by 

 the others, resembled those already described. Sometimes they reposed ; 

 sometimes they moved : their excursions were longer or shorter, though 

 always laboured, as if the power of their natatory organs was inadequate 

 for overcoming the resistance. I could not view these beings otherwise 

 than as living and active animals. 



It is seldom, however, that so numerous a mingled brood appears. 

 About two months earlier, the same Actinia produced nineteen young, 

 large and small, in the course of a night. Also, a month later than the 

 birth of the fourteen animated beings, eight corpuscula, endowed with 

 lively motion, appeared in the vessel, along with another litter of young. 

 They were separated and removed. 



The motion of these embryonic corpuscula subsisted eight days ; but 

 the shape of some was changing, and elongating prominences were rising 

 on others. Their form improved, when I concluded that they would cer- 

 tainly become Actinia?. The rudiments of tentacula became visible in the 

 largest in ten days more, and in other two days they proved six in number. 

 The motion of the rest had now relaxed, and they also exhibited obscure 

 indications of tentacula. They had become elongated caps, with a convex 

 VOL. II. 2 D 



