22 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 
body—a disk at top—one or more circular series of tentacles 
making a border to the disk—a mouth, a merely fleshy, toothless 
opening, at the centre of the disk, sometimes at the summit 
of a conical prominence—a basal disk for attachment. The 
upper extremity is called the acténal end, since it bears the 
tentacles or rays, and the lower or base, the abactinal. 
Sea-anemones vary greatly in color, and in the distri- 
bution of their tints. This is finely illustrated on the first 
four plates of the Author’s Atlas of Zodphytes. Two figures 
of Plate I. are reproduced on the accompanying Plate IL: 
one, Phymactis clematis, from Valparaiso, and the other, Phy- 
mactis veratra, from Wollongong, New South Wales. An- 
other variety of P. clematis has a pink disk, wine-red tenta- 
cles, and the body reddish with dots of dark green. The 
P. florida, from the coast of Peru, one variety of which 1s 
shown on the second plate of the Atlas, has blue tentacles 
and a paler disk; another has a bluish green disk with pur- 
plish tentacles and the papillee of the body dark sap-green on 
a pale reddish ground; and another is green throughout. 
While often brilliantly colored, especially in the tropics, 
other Actiniz are nearly colorless. This was the case with 
that represented in the following cut, a species from Long 
Island Sound near the New Haven Light-house, figured 
some twenty years since by the author, but left undescribed. 
The body in this species had a delicate texture throughout, its 
walls being so transparent that the crgans within could be 
seen through them. It was exceedingly flexible and passed 
through various shapes, imitating vases of many forms, wine 
glasses, goblets, etc. It was generally very slow in its 
changes, and sometimes continued in the same vase-attitude 
for a whole day. 
Actinie vary immensly in size,—from an eighth of an inch 
