MR. GOSSE ON PEACHIA HASTATA. 273 
such as I have had opportunities of personally examining) may be distributed into two 
groups. The first contains such species as have the body studded with warts; the skin 
coriaceous ; the tentacles moderately few, generally thick, conical, and obtuse, and for the 
most part marked on their facial surface with transverse dashes of opaque colour. They 
do not discharge filaments under any annoyance (when wounded, however, the convo- 
luted ovarian bands protrude); and the nettling threads of their tissues are long and 
simple, or at least never brush-like. That of A. crassicornis, indeed, is armed at its base, 
as I have represented it elsewhere* ; but it is in a manner peculiar to itself, and totally 
unlike that of the Sagartie. This fine species deviates, in some other subordinate parti- 
culars, from the rest of the verrucose Actinie, and may possibly require ultimately to be 
separated. For the present, however, I include it in this genus, which I propose to call 
Bunodest. | 
There now remains a group, for which, as it includes the most abundant of our species, 
the everywhere-familiar Smooth Anemone (4. Mesembryanthemum), Y would retain the 
appellation of Actinia. In addition to this well-known species we have two others on the 
_ British shores, which I shall presently mention. Besides the negative characters which 
mark these species—the absence of emitted filaments, and of surface-warts,—they have a 
distinct positive one, in the existence of a series of spherical or oval bodies, of unknown 
function, seated between the outermost row of tentacles and the margin of the disk. In 
our native species these are conspicuous, from their opaque blue or white colour; but in 
exotic species, they occut of other hues. In Mesembryanthemum, the ovarium-bands, and 
the walls of the tentacles, are furnished with comparatively few thread-capsules, which 
are linear, and very small; those of the bands being about 79th of an inch in length, 
and those of the tentacle-walls not more than zy9th; whereas the ovate capsules of the 
Sagartiæ run from glsth (Dianthus) to s}sth (parasitica); the length in most of the 
species being about zjsth. d 
The marginal spherules, however, are almost wholly composed of capsules, very nir, 
and about z45th of an inch long. They very reluctantly emit the thread, which I have 
therefore seen only in few instances. It is very subtile, and of considerable length ; but 
I was not able in any case to trace it to its termination. From these facts I incline sis 
think, that the marginal spherules of Actinia may represent, in function, the missile fila- 
Wee ei ehe te characters of this genus may be mentioned the very delicate and 
. . in ds. The disk and tentacles are 
smooth skin, destitute of both pores and sucking glan 
have nooses at the end ; and whatever any one catches, 
when they engage with the enemy, they throw out ropes, which are entangled in the coils are put to death."— 
whether horse or man, he drags towards himself; and they that 
Herodotus, vii. 85. 
* «Devonshire Coast,’ pl. xxviii. fig. 19. à i Mem. D ibo ut ; 
+ M. Hollard cannot conjecture the function of these marginal spherules. end. La art 
the volume and great transparency of their capsules, their existence I à ak seas indicate some physio- 
sensible to the variations of the atmosphere, when the sea is out,—do not these am re) 
logieal relation between these little organs and the action of light ?’— (Ann. des Sci. a to the sio die since the 
Has not M. Hollard, however, overlooked the fact, that the spherules are never ezpose , 
disk is expanded only under water ? 
+ Bovvwdns, verrucosus, clivosus. 
