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Tealia tuberculata (Cocks).— A Study in Synonymy. 



By 



J. T. Cnuniugliam, B.A., F.R.iS.E., 



Naturalist to the Association. 



With Plate XIX. 



In tlie Report of the Cornwall Polyteclinic Society for 1851 Mr. 

 W. P. Cocks described a species of sea-anemone under the name of 

 Actinia tuberculata. He gave a small figure in illustration, but this 

 was somewhat indefinite. His description is as follows : — " Body 

 globulai'^ light brown, densely covered with large greyish- white 

 tubercles, the apex of each tubercle depressed ; disc white -, mouth 

 large, lips thick, corrugated, and everted ; tentacula numerous, large, 

 obtuse, some bifurcated, others trifurcated. Diameter three and a 

 half inches when contracted." 



P. H. Gosse in his British Sea Anemones and Corals, 1860, 

 quotes the above description, and adds that he had privately received 

 further particulars from Mr. Cocks, namely, that the anemone was 

 obtained thirteen miles south-west from Falmouth, attached to a 

 valve of Pecten maximus, that it lived with Mr. Cocks for some 

 months, that it was " bulky, rather loose in texture, when fully ex- 

 panded covering the bottom of a large pan, — it had the appearance 

 of a mammoth Bellis. It appeared to be extremely irritable, and 

 upon the slightest provocation would throw off from its body a large 

 quantity of thick glaire, which if allowed to remain produced a dis- 

 agreeable smell. When contracted it had the appearance of a half- 

 boiled sago pudding." 



Gosse says he ventured to suggest that it might have been a large 

 colourless deep-water specimen of Tealia crassicornis, but Mr. Cocks 

 repudiated the identification while admitting the relationship ; Gosse 

 concludes that it may be distinct. 



A species of anemone which is exti'emely common in deep water 

 in the neighbourhood of Plymouth, off the south coast of Devon and 

 Cornwall, and numbers of which have been brought to the Laboratory 

 of the Association, is without doubt the species described by Cocks. 

 Cocks' description is not as precise and detailed as the zoological 

 definition of a species ought to be, but there are points in it which 



