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VOL. LXlir.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 461 



nies, while the limbs of the animal are not unlike the shag, or inner part of 

 these flowers, fig. 2. At other times it assumes the shape expressed by fig. 3. 

 Indeed these animals alter their forms so often, that it would be difficult, per- 

 haps even impossible, to describe them exactly. One part of their body or limbs 

 swells at times very considerably, at the expence of the rest. The figures and 

 the particular observations will supply what is wanting here. With regard to 

 their colours, they vary amazingly. Every hue of purple, green, brown and 

 violet is to be seen blended together. A great number of them are of one uni- ?^ j 



form colour; while others are spotted either symmetrically, as in stripes, or in an 

 irregular, but always pleasing manner. Most of them have round their basis a 

 blue or white streak, broader or narrower, which produces a sort of ring. When 

 many of these animals are put together at the bottom of a fiattish and wide vessel, 

 the whole appears as a bed of anemonies. , f . - 



The sea anemonies of the '2d species are pretty nearly shaped out as those of 

 the 1st, but they are much larger. Mr. D. had some, kept in sea water, that 

 were 18 or 20 inches in circumference. Their cloak or outer skin is rough like 

 shagreen, or full of little knobs.* See fig. 10, 11, 12, where they are shown 

 in half the natural size. They remain in the sand, sticking to the loose stones 

 in it, and stretch out their limbs to the top, in order to lay hold of their prey, 

 as soon as it touches the superficies of the sand. The flower of poppies is said to 

 be the plague and distress of painters, to represent exactly the variety and bril- 

 liancy of its colours; the same may be said of the sea anemonies of this larger 

 species. The purest white, carmine, and ultramarine, would hardly be bright 

 enough to paint them properly. The limbs of some of them are of a moderate 

 or dim colour, at the same time that the cloak is made up of the brightest 

 colours. 



The 3d species seems to deviate a little more from the 2d, than this from the 

 1st. Its body, not unlike for shape and colour to the stalk of a mushroom, is 

 terminated in its lower part by a basis, which the animal fixes to the stones in 

 the sand, while by lengthening out its body, it affords means to the superior 

 part, where the limbs and the mouth are placed, of spreading out and opening 

 themselves at the surface of the sand. See fig. 4.-|- This species has some slight 

 variety in point of shape, and still more of colour. Some have their limbs of a 

 bright white, or fine violet colour; others of an ivory white. Some are found 

 of the same sort of yellow with the inside of melons. Some are greenish, or of 

 a fine brown, with the middle white, which gives them a likeness to auriculas. 



Others again have their limbs of a greyish tint, somewhat like the inside of a 

 broken piece of silver ; or alternately mixed with black and white in the manner 

 of the quills of a porcupine. 



* Hiii species is the Actinia cramcornis. f lliere is no fig. 4 in the original plate. 



