30 THE COLOURS. 



exquisitely beautiful ; the diverging but almost pa- 

 rallel fibres, resembling the grain of a beautiful piece 

 of wainscot, and each ending 'abruptly with a rounded 

 point, where the tentacle springs up from the surface 

 on the opposite side. 



The colours of this very lovely Actinia I have not 

 found to vary much. The base is white, which as it 

 ascends becomes flesh-coloured, then lilac, passing (at 

 about the point where the disk expands) into a dull 

 greyish purple, more or less tinged with brown. The 

 upper part of the stem, and the whole of the outer 

 surface of the disk, are studded with pale spots, which 

 are the extremities of tubular glands, one use of 

 which is to attach by a kind of suction, minute bits 

 of shell, gravel, &c., to the surface, for concealment 

 as is supposed. I have not seen this habit commonly 

 resorted to by this species, but I have witnessed it. 

 (See fig. 2.) 



The upper surface of the disk is of a rich deep 

 umber-brown, often mottled with grey at the first row 

 of tentacles, and merging into grey, lavender-colour 

 or white, towards the third or fourth row. The tenta- 

 cles are tapered to a point ; they are grooved longitu- 

 dinally on the upper side ; they are commonly dark 

 brown at the base, and yellowish-brown through the 

 rest of their length, blotched and speckled with white. 

 Those of the inmost row, and frequently some of the 

 others, have one or two broad rings of pure conspi- 

 cuous white near the basal part, and a broad spot of 

 white divided by a brown line lengthwise, on the disk 

 just at their foot. There is some diversity in the 

 proportions of brown and grey, in different individuals. 



