100 SAGARTIAD^. 



With a pipette I took up a drop from one of the diffusing 

 clouds, and submitted it to the microscope. It was filled 

 with millions of excessively minute, hut vigorously motile 

 atoms, clear and colourless, having an ovate body, and a 

 slender tail, which wriggled their little tails, and rapidly 

 oscillated from side to side, from the tail-tip as a 'point 

 d'appui. This was the first time I had ever seen the sper- 

 matozoa (for such they assuredly were) of the Anemones. 



The next morning, the water still continuing turbid, I 

 was about to pour it away, when I saw beneath the spot 

 where the Anemone had lain, a thick layer of cream- 

 coloured soft substance, well-defined in its outline. I took 

 up a little of this and examined it. It proved to be a mass 

 of ova. They agreed with those above described, being 

 mostly quite globular (though a few were distorted) ; the 

 majority closely alike in size, viz. .0058 inch ; but a few 

 were manifestly smaller, and measured from .0046 to .0048 

 inch. They were perfectly defined, with a distinct clear 

 wall, and olive granular contents. 



When crushed with a graduated pressure to rupture, the 

 whole contents of each ovum were seen to consist of a vitelline 

 mass of minute oil-particles in an albuminous fluid, inclosed 

 in a very thin vitelline membrane. In a few instances I 

 detected the germinal vesicle with its germinal spot, some- 

 times by its clearness when the ovum was flattened, some- 

 times by its escape as a clear bladder from the ruptured 

 membrane : but in many examples I could not find it at all. 



I removed the Anemone from the vase, leaving the ova 

 alone, in hope that they would develop, but they all 

 decomposed. 



I may add, that since then I have seen the like discharge 

 of spermatozoa from a specimen of viduata. 



I refer with hesitation the Actinia elegans and A. ex- 

 plorator of Sir John Dalyell to this species. The former 



