256 ILYANTHID.E. 



Tentacles. Transparent and colourless, marked with spots and dashes 

 of opaque white, arranged in irregular transverse rows and rings, which 

 increase in number and size until they become confluent towards the tips, 

 which are thus pure white. The glassy translucency of the tentacles 

 throws out these opaque markings with beautiful effect, especially as the 

 foot of each is girded by a broad circle of white. 



Size. 



Column about three-quarters of an inch long when contracted, but 

 extending to two and a half inches, with a diameter of one-fourth : disk 

 one-fifth of an inch ; expanse of flower about one inch. 



Locality. 

 The south-western coasts of England ; deep water. 



In the summer of 1853 I obtained, from about five 

 fathoms in Weymouth Bay, a specimen of this species, 

 which I described and figured in the Annals of Nat. Hist. 

 under the name of Scoldnthus, as I supposed it to be an 

 unrecognised form. M. de Quatrefages had, however, pub- 

 lished an able and elaborate Memoir* on a form which 

 he had named Edwardsia, in well-merited honour of the 

 eminent French zoologist, M. Milne Edwards. On mature 

 consideration, I was convinced that my Weymouth spe- 

 cimen ought to be placed in this genus ; for though I had 

 described a posterior orifice, which is wanting in Edwardsia, 

 it is probable that I mistook, for such, the depression at 

 which the physa, which I did not see, was retracted. The 

 animal appears to be quite distinct from all of the three 

 French species described by M. de Quatrefages, and to be 

 well marked by its beautiful painting, which, resembling 

 the inlayings of veneer-work, or the figures of the kalei- 

 doscope, suggested to me a name derived from icdXds, beau- 

 tiful, and fiop<f>rj, form. The English term commemorates 



* Annales des Sci. Nat. 1842, Ser. 2, xviii. 65. 



