74 MAKCH. 



while their dull white hue has suggested that the 

 fingers are those of a corpse. The animal is sometimes, 

 however, called Cows' paps, and sometimes Mermaids' 

 gloves ; but I think this latter is a book name. 



When we examine it in the aquarium, after it has 

 recovered its equanimity disturbed by the rude shocks 

 of the hammer battering about its castle, we see that 

 the lobes are greatly swollen and sub-pellucid, from the 

 imbibition of water into the canals with which its 

 whole substance is penetrated. When out of water the 

 surface was studded with shallow pits, as if the poor 

 thing had at some period of its history been afflicted 

 with the small-pox. Now, however, these pittings re- 

 veal their true character ; for each has protruded itself 

 in the form of a long but slender polyp, of exquisite 

 translucency and perfect symmetry. It resembles a 

 tubular flower with eight narrow pointed petals, which 

 arch outward like those of a campanula or tulip. Each 

 petal carries on its edges a row of very slender trans- 

 parent filaments, arranged like the teeth of a comb, 

 which also arch downward, and greatly augment the 

 beauty of the flower-like polyp. 



Structurally, this polyp is closely allied to the com- 

 mon forms of the Sea Anemones ; the most obvious 

 peculiarity being, that a multitude are combined into 

 one mass, with a common life animating the whole. 



