Br M' Bain's Notes on Actinia mesembryanthemum. 285 



the day after, displaying twelve very irregular tentacnla. It 

 fed on the 9th of August, and on the 12th it was delineated 

 in plate 47, figs. 4, 5, and 6. After fifteen months it gave 

 birth to several young, and had a progeny of sixty- four young 

 ones when four years old. An embryo of the actinia, there- 

 fore, extracted artificially from the parent may survive 

 uninjured, and prove prolific. 



The specimen delineated in plate 45 has given birth to 334 

 young actinia in the course of twenty years, but has only 

 produced forty-one during the last thirteen years, and in 

 some of the births, only a single individual. A very long 

 period, therefore, sometimes intervenes without progeny, or 

 many young may be produced within a limited season. 



Feeding certainly promotes fertility. 



Nearly the fortieth part of the 334 young consisted of 

 monstrous animals — by redundancy rather than defect. ISTot 

 so frequent in its later offspring as among the earlier. One 

 had two mouths of unequal dimensions in the same disc, each 

 mouth fed independently, and the system seemed to derive 

 benefit from either. In three years this monster, which was 

 a fine specimen, displayed its tentacula in four rows, not in 

 three, as in normal specimens; the tubercles were twenty- 

 eight, and of a vivid purple. It had produced twenty-eight 

 young, the first brood when fifteen months old, and it sur- 

 vived within a month of five years (plate 47, fig. 3). 



Another form of monstrosity consisted of two bodies 

 united ; four of this kind were produced by the same actinia, 

 and survived ten years. 



Although the colour of the actinia is not dependent on 

 the season, it is subject to alteration, either from the state 

 of the skin, or from other causes. The aged specimen 

 was rather reddish-brown when taken; it underwent suc- 

 cessive modifications; and at that period, 1848, when I 

 conclude it could not be under thirty years old, it was rather 

 of a dull greenish cast, the tubercles blue, the purple ring at 

 the base narrow and faint. From the facility of operations, 

 and particularly from admitting the means of removal in 

 general, by simply pouring the water off most specimens, 

 from their feeding and breeding so readily, this species 

 VOL. IV. 2 D 



