5Q BLUEFIELDS. 



thuricB of various sizes and species lay on the bottom, 

 as inert as usual. 



On another occasion I found a large mass of soft 

 coral-rock, lying in the water, dead. On being 

 broken it was found to be perforated by cavities 

 inhabited by two species of Pholas, two species of 

 Sipunculus, and some Annellida, which I judged to be 

 of the genus SylUs. One of the SipuncuU had a long 

 slender body inhabiting a membranous tube, and 

 communicated with the surface of the stone, whence 

 it protruded its tentacles in the form of a circular 

 disk of great beauty ; the individual tentacles radiat- 

 ing from the centre, and the whole disk marked with 

 alternate concentric lines of light and dark hue. The 

 other species, which was larger, when put into a 

 vessel of sea-water, protruded by the evolution of the 

 integument a long neck, bearing at the extremity a 

 similar tentacular apparatus. I brought home several 

 of these in a bottle of water, preserved pure by the 

 presence of some sea-weeds, together with two hand- 

 some Actinia of a reddish-brown hue, with white 

 warts. The Annellida were remarkable for the ease 

 and agility which they now and then dis2:)layed in 

 swimming, throwing their lengthened bodies into the 

 most elegant serpentine curves.* 



* The diversified animals seen by Captain Basil Hall on coral, in 

 liis voyage to Loo Choo, and described by him in a passage very 

 interesting and often quoted, were certainly parasites analogous to 

 those above mentioned, and not the worms that form the coral, as the 

 Captain seems to have thought them. From his description I should 

 take them to be OphiurcB, Ilolothiiriic, SipwicuH (or perhaps some 

 Annellida). naked Mollusca, and macrurous Crustacea ; — the very forms 

 which I have enumerated above. 



