TUBULARIA. 115 
straws, and not so thick. They grow in clusters of thirty 
or forty pipes together, and certainly a dried specimen has 
but little beauty. How great is its beauty, however, when 
seen in a live state, like a rich bouquet of splendid flowers ! 
“The yellow fistulous stem,” says Sir J. G. Dalyell, 
“full of mucilaginous pith, is rooted on a solid substance 
below, and crowned by a living head resembling a fine 
scarlet blossom, with a double row of tentacula, and often 
with pendent clusters like grapes, embellished by various 
hues, wherein red and yellow predominate. Fifty, or even 
a hundred and fifty, are at times crowded together; their 
heads of diverse figures, shades, and dimensions, constitute 
a brilliant animated group, too rich in nature to be effec- 
tively portrayed by art.” “If the florist,” he says else- 
where, “ enjoys the bloom of those resplendent gems, which, 
void of evident sensation and motion, yet stud the verdant 
fields, or decorate his gardens, and fill the air with fra- 
grance, so much the higher should we prize those living 
tenants of the deep, which testify the action and volition 
diffused throughout their beautiful and luxuriant flourish.” 
When these Zudularie are kept for observation in vessels 
of sea-water, it generally happens, in a few days, that these 
beautiful heads drop off. It would be all over with man, 
