112 FREDERICELLA SULTANA. 



adherent portion frequently extending over several inches, and sending off numerous free 

 subdivided branches of an inch or more in height. The ectocj'st is brown, membrano- 

 corneous, opaque, M'ith a shghtly prominent keel running along each branch, but without any 

 slit-like furrow. At the origin of the branches there is frequently found a more or less 

 perfect septum. The tentacula are about twenty-four in number, constituting when the 

 polypide is e.vserted a campanulate crown of great elegance. 



The statoblasts are somewhat kidney-shaped or bean-shaped, with the annulus obsolete. 

 They are small and seem to be but sparingly produced, a circumstance in which this animal 

 differs strikingly from several species of Alci/onella and Plumatella, in which the tubes at the 

 proper season are constantly found loaded with statoblasts in the greatest profusion. 



The close resemblance of the bushy coencecium of this species to that of Plumatella 

 fruticosa has been already mentioned, indeed I have no doubt of the one having been 

 frequently mistaken for the other. 



I have met with F. sultana during the whole of the spring, summer, and autumn months, 

 both in standing water and rivers, generally avoiding direct exposure to the daylight, though 

 not so decidedly a lover of obscurity as several other species of fresh-water Polyzoa. The 

 tentacular plume is even to the naked eye an object of extreme elegance, and we can easily 

 participate in the feelings which must have actuated Blumenbach when he bestowed on 

 this little animal the imperial designation it has since borne. It can be kept alive and 

 healthy in a phial of pure water, and when undisturbed the polypides will readily issue from 

 their cells and display their plumy crowns. A large branch thus studded with the campanu- 

 late crests of the polypides is an object which in elegance can hardly be surpassed, and with 

 these strange, sentient flowers instantly retreating on the approach of danger, and when all 

 is once more quiet again coming forward in their beauty, presents a spectacle not easily 

 forgotten. 



