Notices of New Books. 7299 



museum, and j-et applies a barbarous grseco-latin name to this truly 

 beautiful book. I have said barbarous : the word Actinologia is not 

 actually a barbarous compound, being derivable from actin, aclinos, 

 a sun-beam or sun-ray, and logos, a treatise or discourse thereon ; but 

 it can have no reference to sea anemones. If Mr. Gosse was deter- 

 mined to conciliate Cerberus, or the spirit of technicality, by throwing 

 him a sop, his offering should have been ' Actinotologia,' which is 

 Greek for a discourse on things radiate, of course including radiate 

 animals, and of course, also, sea anemones : this word, moreover, has 

 the great additional merit, always prized by the technicopholists, of 

 being more difficult to pronounce. 



Having criticised the title, I will not also criticise the work. Mr. 

 Gosse, treating of sea anemones, is on virgin soil ; for I cannot regard 

 the works of Johnston, Milne-Edwards orTugwell as doing more than 

 indicating the existence of such a tribe of animals ; Dr. Johnston, the 

 best of the three, ranks high as an agreeable, discursive and poetical 

 writer on Natural History ; but he totally fails in differentiating 

 species among the animals under consideration. Mr. Gosse is the 

 first author on sea anemones who conveys to his reader the idea that 

 he understands what he is writing about ; and his plates, printed in 

 colours, most beautifully illustrate his descriptions. 



Mr. Gosse's style is always delightful ; ample without being vei*- 

 bose ; perspicuous without repetition. 1 cannot do my readers or 

 Mr. Gosse a greater service than by extracting a passage from the 

 history of Actinoloba Dianthus. 



" A very heterodox notion seems to have obtained currency, that 

 this species differs from other Actiniae in that it is incapable of 

 altering its place when once it has selected it. Dr. Johnston says — 

 and his statement is the more surprising since he had seen several 

 hundreds of individuals — ' As A. Dianthus is a permanently attached 

 species, and cannot be removed without organic injury to the base, it 

 has some claim to be made the type of a genus.' (Brit. Zooph. p. 234). 

 If this were correct the claim (which I have allowed on other grounds) 

 would indeed be well founded ; but the statement is erroneous. Sir 

 John Dalyell, again, while allowing that A. Dianthus shifts its posi- 

 tion spontaneously, affirms that it cannot be compelled to do so with 

 impunity. In illustration of this assertion he mentions the case of a 

 very large one which was attached to a stone too wide to be put into 

 any of his vessels. In this emergency he reversed the stone, laying 

 it across the top of a jar, so that the anemone should hang suspended 

 in the sea-water. He had hoped that the animal would voluntarily 



