THE DEVUNSIIIEE CUE-COKAL. 
313 
centre. The unyielding stony margin of the machal 
cavity preventing the morsel from being drawn down, as it 
would be in an Actinia, the whole disk projects perpen- 
dicularly, like a thick pillar, from amidst the tentacles, 
displaying the dark mass through the pellucid walls. 
Now presently a great change takes place : the whole 
of the soft tissues become distended with water, and take 
on an exquisite translucency and delicacy ; the column 
swells out to twice the width of the corallum, the tentacles 
are like transparent bladders full of water, each crowned 
by its little white globule, and the whole appearance is 
most beautiful. I have seen under these circumstances 
the animal extended to more than an inch and a half above 
the level of the plates. The lip often projects like a thin 
oval wall, or like the brickwork surrounding a well ; 
marked with thick perpendicular ridges of opaque white, 
distinctly defined, separated by interspaces of equal width. 
This is well expressed in the figures (o and 6) given by 
Johnston, after Alder, which are very accurate : figs. 7 and 
8 of the same plate, like too many of the zoophytic deli- 
neations of Forbes, I can only call caricatures. 
I have elsewlrere * given many details of the structure 
and economy of this Coral, to which I can here only refer 
the reader. Among them will be found some curious 
examples of reproductive power; one, in the formation of 
a new disk, mouth, and tentacles, at the lower end of the 
corallum, which had been broken from its base ; and 
another, of the replacement of a large number of the 
sejyta, which had been broken away. 
Of the generation and development of the species I can 
say nothing from personal observation ; the smallest I have 
seen having been about one-sixth of an inch in diameter, 
with a well-formed corallum of half a line in height. 
* Devonshire Coast, pp. 108 — 127. 
