364 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 
branched, rounded, or existing in a shapeless mass or crust, 
while the interior substance is of a spongy or cork-like nature, 
surrounded by tubular rays enclosed in a sort of tough fleshy 
membrane. The Alcyonium digitatum is one of our most. 
common marine productions, so that on many parts of the coast 
scarce a shell or stone can be dredged from the deep that does 
not support one or more specimens. As it lies on the shore, it 
certainly offers few inducements from its beauty to recommend 
it to further notice, and seems fully to warrant the more ex- 
pressive than elegant names of “cow’s paps,” “‘dead man’s toes,” 
or ‘dead man’s hands,” which the fishermen have conferred on 
it. On putting one of these shapeless masses into a glass of 
sea-water, however, and allowing it to remain for a little time 
undisturbed, its real nature becomes apparent, and a series of 
most interesting phenomena present themselves. The dull. 
orange mass, which was at first opaque and of a dense texture, 
slowly swells and becomes more diaphanous, apparently by the 
absorption of the surrounding water into its substance, until, 
having attained its full dimensions, numerous dimples appear, 
studding its entire surface, each of which, as it gradually 
expands, reveals itself to be a cell, the residence of a polyp, 
which, gradually protruding itself, pushes out a cylindrical 
body, clear as crystal, fluted like a column, and terminated by a 
coronet of eight delicately fringed tentacula. The unsightly 
aspect of the trunk, which reminded us of cadaverous fingers 
or toes, is now forgotten, just as we forget the uncouth branches 
of a cactus when we see it clothed with its gorgeous flowers. 
All the polyp-cells are connected by a complicated system of 
inosculating canals, bound together by a fibrous net-work, and 
lying imbedded in a transparent jelly, which forms the fleshy 
part of the compound animal. The eggs are Indged in the 
tubes, and at length discharged through the mouth. 
The Sea-Pens, or Pennatule, are remarkable from the circum- 
stance that, although they possess an internal calcareous sup- 
port, they are not permanently attached to foreign bodies. 
The lower portion of the stem, which strikingly resembles the 
barrel of a quill, is naked, and, when found in the bays upon 
our coast, is generally stuck into the mud at the bottom like 
a pen into an inkstand, whilst the upper two thirds of the stem 
are feathered with long closely set pinnz, comparable to the 
