148 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 
onercularis. They were fully four inches in height. Dr. 
Johnston says, “it is very delicate, of a white or rarely 
horn-colour” (with us always white), ‘simple, plumous, 
and pretty.” The cells are transparent ; the vesicles, in the 
West, are often produced in great abundance, and the aper- 
ture, after the expulsion of the ova, is cut into a circle of 
spinous teeth, or, as Ellis expresses it, “the tops of the 
ovaries are divided like a coronet.” 
When the dredge had brought up some fine specimen of 
more than four inches in height, as the boatmen expressed 
surprise that we should care for what was, in its collapsed 
state, as worthless-looking as a wetted feather, I told them 
to hand me some water in a vessel which was in the boat, 
and plunging the Pecten with several fine specimens on it 
into the water, I told them to look at it now. Every spe- 
cimen being now spread out in its native beauty, they were 
filled with astonishment, saying they did not think that 
there had been anything so bonny in the whole bay*. Meet- 
* “These beautiful algee were not the only parasites on the scallop-shells. 
There was something more conspicuous, as it was about four inches in length, 
but certainly it did not seem more attractive: it was like a drookit white 
feather. But place it again in the water, and what does it become? It has 
recovered from its state of collapse, and though still like a feather, it is one 
of great beauty and elegance ;—it is a zoophyte, Plumularia pinnata. You 
