REPRODUCTION OF PARTS. 121 



reproduced by seed, will be retained in new shoots 

 and cuttings, which are integral parts of the indi- 

 vidual plant. While I write these lines, the new 

 mouth is swallowing a morsel of raw beef, stretching 

 its expansile lips with the same deliberate skill as it 

 it had had many years' practice, instead of this 

 being the first occasion of its so hanselling its new 

 powers. 



I have another specimen in which about half the 

 disk of calcareous plates had been broken away in 

 the act of dislodging it. New plates were very soon 

 formed to replace the lost ones, which, however, have 

 not attained the height of the former, so that though, 

 when looked at vertically, the radiating disk of plates 

 appears perfect, wdien viewed side-wise, a deep step or 

 shoulder is seen across the disk, the new half pre- 

 senting a considerably lower level than the old. Yet 

 when the soft parts are protruded, the distortion is not 

 conspicuous, the disk only seeming somewhat oblique 

 instead of horizontal. 



On breaking a living Coral in pieces we find among 

 the plates a multitude of narrow membranous bands 

 with thickened edges, frilled and puckered and con- 

 voluted to a great degree, and of a pale salmon-red 

 tint. These answer to the similar bands that I have 

 before mentioned in the Actinim, and are considered to 

 be the ovaries. If we watch them closely we shall 

 see that they have a spontaneous motion, slowly 

 twisting and twining over each other like so many 

 worms ; and if we submit a small portion to micro- 

 scopical examination we shall find it fringed with 

 minute vibratile cilia. 



M 



