172 



ANTHOZOA ASTEROIDA. 



Fig. 37. 



parts, but softer and pithy towards the rounded extremities of the 

 branches. The crust is whitish, and thickly covered with pearshaped 

 scaly polype-cells, which project about four lines, and are mostly erect 

 and appressed, but some of them are 

 retroflexed; they are indistinctly cari- 

 nate on the distal and concave on the 

 proximal side, where the scales are im- 

 perfect. The scales are subimbricate, 

 smooth, roundish, or inclined to be quad- 

 rangular, with an even or slightly broken 

 margin, two in the lower series, four 

 in the upper row ; and here the polype- 

 cell becomes suddenly truncate, a small 

 cone rising up within, formed of eight 

 lesser scales of an elliptical shape con- 

 verging together. The polype-cell, as 

 a whole, has been compared to the seed- 

 capsule of the Reseda, whence the speci- 

 fic name which Pallas has adopted, and 

 which has the right of priority; but 

 Linnaeus changed it to lepadifera, seeing 



a nearer resemblance to some species of barnacles : " Flores Lepadi- 

 bus Balanis simillimi." 



I have made this description from a fragment brought by Sir 

 Arthur Capell de Brooke from Norway, and sent to me by Mr. 

 Stokes. Ellis figures the polype-cells " hanging over one another ;" 

 and their pendulous condition is admitted into the generic character 

 by Lamouroux, but it is evidently unessential, and dependant on the 

 position in which the specimen has been dried. Mr. Stokes has just 

 described, as I am informed by Professor Edw. Forbes, " a new 

 species dredged by Sir James Ross, in more than two hundred 

 fathoms' water, in the Antarctic seas :* it is very distinct from, but 

 beautifully representative of the northern species, and it shews that 

 the polype-cells are always nominally erect" This may be so, but it 

 seems to me evident that, in the Pr. lepadifera, the animal has the 

 power of moving the cells at will, and can hold them either erect 

 or pendant. 



Sir A. Capell de Brooke tells us that Primnoa lepadifera " is 



* It will be figured in Sir James Ross's voyage. Mr. Stokes is the first to discover 

 that specific characters in this genus depend greatly on the form and arrangement of 

 the scales of the polype-cells. 



