78 ANTHOZOA HYDROIDA. 



observable in some specimens from the coast of Africa. Mr. Macgil- 

 livray has made the same observation : " Sometimes the cells have 

 one of the lateral teeth abortive or wanting ; in the latter case the 

 remaining tooth is often as long as the mucronated tip, which thus 

 appears bifid. On a small specimen before me, presenting the above 

 arrangement, a solitary, somewhat obovate, compressed, truncated, 

 and operculated vesicle has its lateral margin so sinuated as to pre- 

 sent three distinct notches." The vesicles are irregularly scattered 

 on the branches, large, smooth, egg-shaped, the top often covered 

 with a sort of rounded operculum. They are produced abundantly 

 in the winter season and in spring, when indeed, I think, the ova- 

 ries appear on the greater number of this order of corallines. It 

 was from the great resemblance of these vesicular ovaries to the 

 capsules of mosses, that the early botanists drew an additional argu- 

 ment in behalf of the vegetability of the corallines themselves ; * 

 and a Darwinian might be, perhaps, forgiven, were he even now to 

 feign how the Nereides stole them from the mossy herbelets of Flora's 

 winter and vernal shows, to deck and gem the arbuscular garnitures 

 of their own coral caves ! t 



The shoots are usually so little waved, that Pallas' term " subflex- 

 uosi" is very appropriate; but in the collection of Dr. Coldstream 

 there is a large specimen, from the Frith of Forth, in which they 

 are remarkably zigzag or kneed, so as 'to give it a peculiar character 

 and appearance. In the same collection are specimens from the 



* " These vesicles appearing at a certain season of the year, according to the 

 different species of corallines, and then falling off, like the blossoms or seeds of 

 plants, has made some curious persons, who have not had an opportunity of seeing 

 the animals alive in the vesicles, conclude them to be the seed-vessels of plants ; and 

 into this mistake I was led myself, in the account laid before the Royal Society in 

 ] 752 : in which account I had taken some pains to point out the great similitude 

 between the vesicles and denticulated appearance of some of these corallines, and 

 the tooth-shaped leaves and seed-vessels of some species of land-mosses, particularly 

 of the Hypnum and Bryum." Ellis, Corall. Introd. ix. 



t " Nymphs ! you adorn, in glossy volutes roll'd, 

 The gaudy conch with azure, green, and gold. 



* * * * 



You chase the warrior shark, and cumbrous whale, 



And guard the mermaid in her briny vale ; 



Feed the live petals of her insect-flowers, 



Her shell-wrack gardens, and her sea-fan bowers ; 



With ores and gems adorn her coral cell, 



And drop a pearl in every gaping shell." 



Botanic Garden, Canto iii. 



