ALCYONOID POLYPS. 69 



Verrill, were six to eight inches in lengtli, and, where thickest, 

 were three inches or more in diameter. 



A common Mediterranean species is the Vcretillum cynonio- 

 rium; and it has been recently found, of a length of ten inches, 

 in the depths of the Atlantic off the coast of Spain. Mr. 

 VV. S. Kent observes, with regard to its polyps and their phos- 

 phorescent qualities, as follows : — 



" Nothing can exceed the beauty of the elegant opaline 

 polyps of this zoophyte when fully expanded, and clustered 

 like flowers on their orange-coloured stalk ; a beauty, however, 

 almost equalled by night, when, on the slightest irritation, the 

 whole colony glows from one extremity to the other with 

 undulating waves of pale green phosphoric light. A large 

 bucketful of these Alcyonaria was experimentally stirred up 

 one dark evening, and the brilliant luminosity evolved produced 

 a spectacle too brilliant for words to describe. The support- 

 ing stem appeared always to be the chief seat of these phos- 

 phorescent properties, and from thence the scintillations 

 travelled onward to the bodies of the polyps themselves. 

 Some of the specimens of this magnificent zoophyte measured 

 as much as ten inches from the proximal to the distal extremity 

 of the supporting stalk, while the individual polyps, when fully 

 exserted, protruded upward of an inch and a half from this 

 inflated stalk, and measured as much as an inch in the diameter 

 of their expanded tentacular discs." 



In several genera of the Pennatula tribe there are two kinds 

 of polyps over the surface, and this was the case with the 

 Veretillum Stimpsoni^ as observed by Professor Verrill. Between 

 the large and well-developed polyps, there were multitudes of 

 small wart-like prominences, each of which proved to be a 

 polyp, but very small and imperfectly developed, having only 

 two lamellae in the interior instea<3 of the usual eight, and 

 without distinct tentacles, or the ordinary nettling cords within. 



Among the other forms of Zoophytes in the Pennatula tribe 

 are those having a stout axis, with branches either side, 

 arranged regularly in plume-like style (the Pennatulidse) ; 

 or a very slender stem and verv short lateral polyp-bearing 



