110 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 



drium rameum) was recovered from among the rocks of a 

 cavity in the bottom of the Firth of Forth, at about 150 

 feet from the surface. It had vegetated in such a direction 

 that it was detached quite entire. Being transferred to a 

 capacious vessel of sea- water, I found it rising seven and a 

 half inches in height, by a stem about nine lines in diameter 

 near the root, then subdividing into several massy boughs, 

 besides many lesser branches. Numberless twigs, termi- 

 nated by thousands of minute hydrae of the palest carna- 

 tion, clothed the extremities, which were ten inches apart. 



"The root itself diffused irregularly, by a multitude of 

 mossy- like fibres, which might be circumscribed by a circle 

 of two inches diameter. It is to be observed that the stem, 

 and the higher rigid portions, consisted of irregular bundles 

 of tubes ; but about two inches of the highest were in ver- 

 ticillate arrangement. Though composed of bundles of 

 tubes below, the absolute extremities, bearing the hydrae, 

 resolve into single tubes, each with its animal. 



" Many parasites invested this splendid specimen. Masses 

 of the pure white and deep orange Alcyonium digitatum 

 hung from the boughs ; Sertularia, sponges, and algse were 

 profusely interspersed, all proving, by their obvious succes- 

 sive generations, the great antiquity of the Eudendrium. 



