228 SEPTEMBER. 



Let me anticipate here to narrate the after history of 

 my captive. Consigned to a shallow tank at home, 

 after a few days I missed him one morning, and on 

 searching the whole room carefully, found him at length 

 under the edge of the hearth-rug, some yards from the 

 tank, with all his rays broken into many pieces, and 

 only the short stumps remaining. Though dry and 

 apparently dead, I perceived a slight movement in the 

 stumps, which gave me hope of revival, and I replaced 

 the poor maimed thing, sadly shorn of his glory, in the 

 tank. He did revive ; and the truncated ends of the 

 ray- stumps enabled me to see the arrangement of the 

 spines. These form about nine rows on each side, 

 radiating fan-like ; within the undermost row on each 

 side is a row of flexible bladdery tubes much like the 

 suckers, and like them protruding from orifices in the 

 calcareous skeleton, but not retractile. They are studded 

 with tiny warts, and terminate not in a sucking disk, 

 but in a sort of bifid extremity. They are not used for 

 locomotion, nor are they ordinarily applied to the ground 

 as if tactile, and yet are continually thrown round so 

 that the tip is brought up to the base, and this suddenly 

 and abruptly, and every few seconds, as if something 

 were captured and conveyed to the mouth ; but this 

 cannot be, for the mouth is not there, and nothing is 

 seen to be seized. Perhaps some intelligence, in a way 



