98 PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 
fathoms, muddy bottom), acquires additional interest. In this the basal 
end of the style is broadly falciform and abruptly curved at a nearly 
right angle to the line of the axis, a shape peculiarly well adapted for 
either permanent or prolonged anchorage in a muddy bottom, and in this 
respect certainly superior to, and advantageous over, the simpler based 
rods or styles in most of the species. V. ornata, it seems to me, fills the 
place of an intermediate and connecting link between what may be 
called the simple staiked pennatulids and the furcate-rooted species I 
have described in this paper. Such marked variation in the form of the 
styles seems to indicate a corresponding difference in habit. 
It will hardly be questioned that the rooted form points to a sedentary 
habit, and a fixed and permanent local habiiat; and the simple forms of. 
axial rods, with such relevant data as we have at hand, imply, if not a 
positively and continuously active natatory capacity, certainly a less 
sedentary existence, more freedom, and greater activity of habit. As 
relating to the foregoing implication we may consider the following: 
Bohadsch says that the Pennatule swim by means of their pinne, 
which they use in the same manner that fishes do their fins. Ellis says 
it “is an animal that swims freely about in the sea,” “‘many of them 
having a muscular motion as they swim along;” and in another place 
he tells us that these motions are effected by means of the pinnules or 
feather-like fins; ‘these are evidently designed by nature to move the 
animal backward or forward in the sea, consequently do the office of 
fins.” (Phil. Trans. abridg., xii, 42.) Pallas adopted, with some reser- 
vation (Mise. Zoul., p. 177), the opinion of Bohadsch; * * * Cuvier 
tells us that they have the power of moving by the contractions of the 
fleshy part of the polypidom, and also by the combined action of its 
polyps; and to adopt the words of Dr. Grant, ‘‘a more singular and 
beautiful spectacle could scarcely be conceived than that of a deep 
purple Pen. phosphorea, with all its delicate transparent polypi ex- 
panded and emitting their usual brilliant phosphorescent light, sailing 
through the still and dark abyss by the regular and synchronous pul- 
sationus of the minute fringed arms of the whole polypi.”. And Bohadsech 
asserts that he has been a witness of this spectacle. But some authors, 
like Lamarck and Schweigger, reasoning from what is known regarding 
other compound animals, have denied the existence of this great locomo- 
tive power in a zoophyte placed so low in the scale as “contrary toevery an- 
alogy, and not necessary to the existence or wants of the animal.” To the 
foregoing, relating to the allied group Pennatule quoted from Johnston’s 
British Zoophytes,* that author adds his opinion in these words: “And 
there is little doubt these naturalists are right, for when placed in a basin 
or plate of sea-water the Pennatule are never observed to change their 
position, but remain on thesame spot, and lie with the same side up or 
down, just as they have been putin.” To this I may say, by way of com- 
meni, that much depends on the length of time and under what condi-_ 
* Volume 1, pp. 160, 161. 
