30 
SAGARTIAD.E. 
Stellata. Disk pale buff ; a broad darker circle at the commencement 
of the tentacular border. Tentacles long and pointed ; very pale stone- 
drab, each varied with pellucid patches, which give a pretty and delicate 
effect. But what is most peculiar is the alternate depression and elevation 
of the margin, a kind of frilling, which imparts to the disk a star-like form, 
usually of seven rays. This is a large and well-marked variety. 
The genus Sagartia was established by me in a Memoir* 
read before the Linnean Society, March 20th, 1855. I then 
included in it dianthus, as well as the species to whieh I 
now confine it. The eharaeter on which I mainly relied 
in eonstituting it, appears to me, on maturer consideration, 
to mark a group of higher value than that of a genus ; and 
I have accordingly used it to characterise a family. Hence 
it became necessary to make a fresh diagnosis of the genus, 
which, though large, appears a very natural one. The 
name I have chosen alludes to the peculiar mode of dis- 
abling their prey, by means of missile cords, which is 
possessed pre-eminently by the species of this group, re- 
calling to my mind a graphic passage in the writings of 
the Father of History. In the army of Xerxes, he says, — 
“ there was a certain race called Sagartians. The mode of 
fighting practised by these men was this : — when they 
engaged an enemy, they threw out a rope with a noose at 
the end ; whatever any one caught, whether horse or man, 
he dragged towards himself, and those that were entangled 
in the coils were speedily put to death.” f 
The specific appellation of the present subject is the 
botanic name of a favourite flower, — the modest Daisy ; — 
helUs, from hellus, liretty. 
Though the Daisy Anemone is,^as I have shown, subject 
to considerable variety, and has no one very strongly 
* “ Description of Peachia liastata, &c.” Linn. Tmns. xxi. 267. 
t Herodotus, vii. 85. 
