ANTHOZOA HYDROIDA. 



Les SERTULAIRIENS, Audouin and M, Edwards in Lam. Anim. s. Vert. ii. 105. 

 ZOOPHYTA HYDROIDA, Johnston in Mag. Zool. and Bot. i. 447. POLYPIARIA, 

 J. E. Gray in Syn. Brit. Mus. 133. NUDIBRACHIATA, Farre in Phil. Trans, 

 an. 1837. HYDROZOA, Owen Lect. 82. 



" As for your pretty little seed-cups or vases, they are a 

 sweet confirmation of the pleasure Nature seems to take in 

 superadding an elegance of form to most of her works, wher- 

 ever you find them. How poor and bungling are all the 

 imitations of art ! When I have the pleasure of seeing you 

 next, we will sit down, nay kneel down if you will, and 

 admire these things."* Thus did Hogarth our great moral 

 painter write to Ellis in evident reference to the zoophytes 

 of the present order ; and he must indeed be more than ordi- 

 narily dull and insensate, who can examine them without 

 catching some of the enthusiasm of the artist. They excel 

 all other zoophytical productions in delicacy and the graceful 

 arrangement of their forms; some borrowing the character 

 of the prettiest marine plants, others assuming the semblance 

 of the ostrich-plume, while the variety and elegance exhibited 

 in the figures and sculpture of their miniature cups and cha- 

 lices is only limited by the number of their species. 



The Hydroida vary from a few lines to upwards of a foot 

 in height. They are all, with the exception of the Hydra 

 and Cordylophora, marine productions, and are found attached 

 to rocks, shells, sea-weed, other corallines, and to various 

 shell-fish. Many of them appear to be indiscriminate in their 

 choice of the object, but others again make a decided pre- 

 ference. Thus Thuiaria thuja prefers the valves of old shells, 

 Thoa halecina is more partial to the larger univalves, Anten- 

 nularia antennina grows in coarse sand on rocks, Laomedea ge- 

 niculata delights to cover the broad frond of the tangle with a 



* Lin. Corresp. vol. ii. p. 44. 



