SERTULARIA. 135 
Feed the live petals of her insect flowers, 
Her shell-wrack gardens and her sea-fan bowers ; 
With ores and gems adorn her coral cell, 
And drop a pearl in every gaping shell.” —Botanic Garden. 
Mr. W. Thompson states, “I have collected a few ex- 
amples of a black, as well as many of a red colour.” 
16. SERTULARIA ARGENTEA, Squirrel’s Tail Coralline. 
(Plate V. fig. 15.) 
Hab. In deep water. On oysters, and other bivalve 
shells. In brackish water, in shallow pools, and on the 
floodgates of a dam in Belfast, Mr. W. Thompson. 
This beautiful feathered coralline is found in great abun- 
dance, Hills states, in the island of Sheppey, eastward of 
Sheerness, growing on the rock oysters. “It generally 
grows erect,” he adds, “ with thick tufts of alternately den- 
ticulated ramifications placed in a spiral or screw-like order 
round the stem from top to bottom.” The whole coralline 
assumes somewhat of the shape of a squirrel’s tail, whence 
the common Hnglish name. It is an exceedingly elegant 
polypidom, rising sometimes to nearly a yard in height, and, 
from being quite flexible, waving in the sea as the somewhat 
similarly-shaped Swedish junipers wave in the breeze, 
When it gets old, the under part of the stem becomes quite 
