REPRODUCTION OF THE CORONET, 421 



At the time of preparing this note for the press, the 

 Sabellm have been in captivity about four months, 

 more than three of which have been spent in Lon- 

 don. Some have died, but the others are still 

 apparently in good health. No increase has taken 

 place in the young ones, in the number of filaments 

 in their coronets, nor, so far as I can perceive, in the 

 dimensions of their tubes. The species is probably 

 slow of growth and long-lived. The man who shewed 

 me the group in the rock, had himself known them to 

 be there for several years past, and they were as large 

 when he first discovered them as at last. 



An interesting circumstance, however, has occurred, 

 illustrative of the faculty which the creature has of 

 reproducing its organs. When the specimens were 

 transferred to London, I found that the confinement 

 in close jars had been well-nigh fatal to several. Two 

 were disposed to desert their tubes, but I pushed them 

 back by gentle force, and these presently recovered, 

 though their fans were very flaccid at first. Those of 

 two other tubes, which were attached, side by side, to 

 the same fragment of rock, did not protrude the fans 

 at all, and though I watched day by day, it was in 

 vain, for these beautiful organs appeared no more, 

 and I concluded that the animals had died. 



I did not, however, remove the tubes from the vase 

 of water, but allowed them to lie week after week upon 

 the bottom ; remarking all the time, with curiosity, 

 yet without suspicion of the actual state of the case, 

 that neither the tubes, nor, as far as I could see, the 

 contents, showed any tendency to decomposition, nor 

 did the water become off'ensive. 

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