Dixon — On Two Irish Specimens of Edwardsia timida. 105 



species now under consideration, says, five lines of a violet black 

 run from the circumference of the disk to the mouth, and that in 

 the intervals between these lines five others of the same colour, 

 only less marked, are to be seen. Agassiz, too, is evidently of 

 opinion that there need not be an absolute conformity between the 

 tentacles and mesenteries in Edwardsia. In describing the de- 

 velopment of a larval Edwardsia (Arachnactis), he says: " Les 

 nouveaux tentacules se forment independamment des cloisons ova- 

 riennes, et je n'ai pas pu en suivre l'indice exactement, relativement 

 aux huit cloisons principales ; mais comme je l'ai deja indique, 

 les jeunes tentacules se forment toujours vers une des extremites — 

 a 1'extremite opposee de la bouche ou se trove le long tentacule 

 impair." — Archiv. Zool, 1873, vol. xn., p. xxxviii. 



Habits. 



The habits of my two specimens during the few months they 

 lived in captivity were very much the same as those described by 

 Quatrefages and by Andres in his description of a kindred species 

 (Intorno all' E. claparedii, Mittheil. Zool. Stat. z. Neapel, 1881, n., 

 p. 129). 



I kept them in a small glass jar with about one-fourth inch of 

 sand. They sometimes adhered to the sides of the glass vessel by the 

 physa, sometimes burrowed in the sand, leaving only the capitulum 

 protruded, and sometimes they wallowed about on the surface of 

 the sand quite free : in the last-mentioned condition they were 

 usually distended more fully than when fixed in the sand, or when 

 adhering by the physa. Their shape and dimensions varied greatly 

 according to the degree of their distension, but I think hardly to 

 the extent observable in other free anemones, the presence of the 

 investment seeming to limit them somewhat in this respect. There 

 was generally a constriction marking the division of the scapus 

 from the physa ; and sometimes, when the animal was contracted, 

 the capitulum was separated from the scapus in the same manner ; 

 but I never saw these constrictions passing up or down the body, as 

 one sees in Halcampa or Peachia ; on the contrary, they appeared 

 to be fixed and constant in their position. 



The physa was frequently covered with particles of sand, which 

 seemed to be adhering in a thin coating of slime, for if the physa, 



SCIEN. PKOC, ll.D.S. VOL. V. PT. IT. 



