86 SAGARTIAD^E. 



and sea-weeds;" but added no other information to the 

 description of Miiller, which he quoted in the original 

 Latin. An expression in this, which had puzzled me not 

 a little, became graphically descriptive when I saw the 

 living animal. Miiller says that the tentacles " seem com- 

 posed of an eye furnished with exceedingly slender rings 

 crowded together," — a comparison which at first seems 

 little applicable to such organs. But, in fact, they are 

 frequently contracted into very low cones or warts ; when, 

 viewed from above, they present the appearance of a 

 number of fine rings surrounding the central point, very 

 much like the eye-spots in a butterfly's wing. (See left- 

 hand figure above.) 



The colony in my possession consists of one of the size 

 and character that I have described above, and several 

 minute ones around it, none of them so large as a small 

 pea. Since I have had them, two or three more have been 

 produced from the largest, from the size of a grain of sand 

 to that of a poppy-seed. I believe all of these are the 

 result of a spontaneous separation of fragments from the 

 base, and not of a generative process. The most minute 

 displays its circle of tiny tentacles. 



The outline of the base is exceedingly variable: it 

 projects in ragged promontories and rounded points, which 

 continually, though slowly, change their form and relative 

 proportions. From some of these, minute fragments sepa- 

 rate, which soon become independent animals. It is 

 possible that the Actinia lacerata of Sir J. Dalyell may be 

 this species; but I rather incline to identify it with our 

 viduata. The sinuous outline on which he relied rather 

 indicates a condition than a species. 



Though the short conical form of the tentacles is charac- 

 teristic, yet occasionally they assume a lengthened slender 

 shape, their markings becoming evanescent. Miiller 



