THE ANATOMY OF ALGYONItTM DIGlTATITM. 340 



rough notes and drawings on this subject that were found 

 among his papers, for which kindness I am glad to have the 

 opportunity of expressing my warmest thanks. The notes are 

 only those made in the course of his work in the laboratory^ 

 and were not prepared in any kind of way for publication, but 

 whatever help or suggestion I may have gained from them I 

 have expressed in the text ; and as the few drawings that were 

 finished are those of another species of the genus to that I 

 have myself investigated, I have not incorporated them at all 

 into this memoir. 



Section II. — General Form and Natural History of the 



Colony. 



Alcyonium digitatum in its younger stages occurs in 

 the form of small incrusting masses on shells, weeds, worm- 

 tubes, &c.^ As it grows older and larger it becomes dome- 

 shaped, then spherical and cylindrical, and finally branches 

 into five to eight blunt processes which become slightly 

 flattened in one plane when the colony reaches its largest size. 

 In the branched condition it is commonly called ^'cow^s 

 paps,^' " dead men's toes/^ or " dead men's fingers," all of 

 which terms are more or less appropriate to its lifeless, sodden, 

 pulpy appearance. 



The largest colonies I have measured are eight inches long 

 from the base to the tip of the longest branch, and six inches in 

 breadth. 



The colour of Alcyonium varies very considerably with the 

 locality. The specimens caught in deep water off the Eddy- 

 stone Lighthouse are almost invariably of a pale pinkish colour 

 when alive, but they rapidly bleach just before death. Those 

 living in shallower water are quite white. Johnston states 

 that he occasionally met with it of a reddish-orange colour, 

 and I have myself dredged up yellow varieties off the west 

 coast of Scotland, and have seen similar specimens from the 

 Shetlands, the Bristol Channel, and elsewhere. 



* The youngest specimen I have found consists of a single polyp with one 

 bud sprouting frona its side. 



