200 
BUNODID.E. 
species, in his admirable memoir “ On the Actiniae of 
Falmoutli,” which was read before the Cornwall Polytechnic 
Society, in the autumn of the same year. He had been 
acquainted with the species ever since 1847 ; and had pub- 
lished the name in the Society’s Report for 1849. To Mr. 
Cocks’s appellation, therefore, belongs the claim of priority; 
but even were it otherwise, ]\Ir. Thompson’s name must be 
rejected, not only because it had been previously^ applied 
to another species, but, according to a canon which I have 
already had occasion to apply to one of my own names,t 
because it conveys a false idea. The name clavata origi- 
nated in a misconception. In the single specimen known 
to Mr. Thompson at that time, he mistook the curling of 
the tips of the tentacles for a clubbing, whence the name 
“ clavata ” — clubbed. These organs have not the slightest 
tendency to such a form as the term implies. The name 
which I adopt was given, I believe, in honour of the late 
Robert Ball, LL.D., an eminent marine zoologist. 
I found the species not uncommon at AVeymouth in 
1853, especially on the ledges that are exposed at the 
recess of the tide, under Byng Cliff. Its habit is to limk 
in narrow fissures in the cavities of the under side of large 
flat stones, and not unfrequently in the deserted holes of 
Pholas or Saxicava. The disk is very wide and flat ; and, 
as it is also very expansile, it spreads itself to a consider- 
able distance around the margin of its hole. So essential is 
it to its comfort, however, that it should have a retirement, 
that if it be put into an aquarium, though it may at first 
affix itself to a flat stone or to the sui-face of a shell, it will 
creep away, by means of its base, till it find some loose 
stone, under which it will insinuate itself till it is quite 
M. Rathke had named clavata an Actinia, which he found on the coast 
of Norway, in 1843. 
t See ante, p. 75, 
