28 
SAGAETIAD^, 
as many ; the fourth again doubled ; the fifth increasing in about the 
same proportion; and the sixth including about thrice as many as the 
fifth. Thus the total number may be about five hundred. Those of the 
first row usually stand erect, the others decline more and more as they 
recede, until the last two or three rows lie quite horizontally on the disk, 
to which the sixth row forms an exquisite fringe. Those of the first row 
rarely exceed one-fourth of an inch in height, and the others diminish 
regularly ; those of the sixth are very minute ; the longest (for they are 
not equal) scarcely exceeding the sixteenth of an inch in length, and some 
being mere tubercles ; these are slender, and set so close together, th.at 
sixty are contained within an inch. Those of the inner rows are usually 
marked with a depressed line or groove, down the middle of the front. 
Mouth. Not raised on a cone. Lip moderately thin, finely furrowed. 
Colour. 
Column. Lower part flesh-colour, often flushing into pink; gradually 
paling upward to white, drab, or buff in the middle part : this as gradually 
becoming dull violet on the upper third, where the suckers usually are 
conspicuous as pale spots. 
Disk. Dark brown or black, the radii separated by fine lines of rich 
vermilion, commencing at the mouth, and diverging till they meet the 
tentacles, passing a little way up the sides of each. 
Tentacles. Yellowish-brown, studded with whitish specks, and varied 
with white or grey patches. There is commonly a dark-brown space near 
the base, bounded, above and below, by a band of pure white. Frequently 
groups of tentacles thus mottled alternate with equal groups of uniformly 
dull-brown ones; the regions of the discal border from which they re- 
spectively spring, corresponding in some measure, being either brown or 
lavender- grey. In many specimens a single tentacle, or sometimes two 
opposite ones, of the first series, are rather larger than the rest, and of an 
unspotted cream-white ; when these occur, it is generally in connexion 
with one or two white gonidied radii. In other specimens there is no 
trace of such a distinction. 
Mouth. Lip and throat white.* 
* The student will please to observe that the specific description is the 
description of but one condition, or variety. It is convenient to have a 
starting-point or standard of comparison, but it must not be supposed that 
this particular condition is the one proper to the species, and that the other 
