288 THE FEATHER PLUMULARIA. 



of the cliimney of an ordinary lamp, with the bottom 

 closed by a plate of glass : this was about half-full of 

 sea-water. In three or four days, examining curso- 

 rily with a lens, I was surprised to see the bottom 

 crowded with young polypes growing erect from every 

 part. They were there by hundreds ; I detached a 

 few for more particular examination. Each consisted 

 of an irregular dilated glassy plate, adhering to the 

 bottom : from some point of which sprang up erect a 

 slender tube, with one or two joiuts, and terminating 

 in a cell of the same form as those above described. 

 The medullary core permeated the tube, and was 

 developed into a perfectly-formed polype inhabiting the 

 cell, and freely expanding from it. The tube, the cell 

 and the polype, were of the same dimensions as in the 

 adult. Some of the cells already shewed, in the form 

 of a tubercle budding from their bases, the com- 

 mencement of a new joint of the lengthening poly- 

 pidom. (Fig. 13.) 



Along with these, on the floor of the glass-vessel, 

 were many minute animalcules of an opaque white 

 hue, somewhat j^lanaria-Yike, which crawled slowly 

 and irregularly, protruding the anterior portion of 

 the body in a blunt point, but often contracting the 

 whole outline into a sub-globose form. (Figs. 7, 8, 

 and 9). These worm-like animalcules I found to ba 

 the primal form of the young polype, and though I 

 have not been able to trace the metamorphosis 

 through every stage of its development in the same 

 individual, the facts T have observed leave it indu- 

 bitable. 



I took two plates of thin glass, and suspended 



