Radiata. 7295 



The Sea Anemones of Dawlish, Devon. — Seeing by your last most interesting and 

 valuable work on Sea Anemones that you particularize different localities in which 

 species are found, I venture to trespass on your valuable time by describing 

 the varieties which I — although a tyro indeed — have found at. Dawlish. Small 

 orange, drab, and flesh-coloured Actinoloba Dianthus, with disks, when expanded, 

 varying in circumference from a silver penny-piece to a shilling or even half-a crown, 

 are common enough. And here and there, mostly in the company of the Plumose, I 

 find Sagartia viduata, with the disk averaging three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 

 and column, principally at night, extended to nearly two inches. Within three 

 hundred yards of the shore at the Horse Rock point, on a low shelving mass of con- 

 glomerate rock, I have lately come upon a complete colony of the white, and a variety, 

 translucent neutral-tinted white Dianthus, with disks as large as represented in tigure 

 1, plate 1 of your book. May I describe to you here also the peculiarity of one of the 

 large sized Actinoloba which I found ? Unfortunately, after a month's healthy exist- 

 ence it died, ere I had seen your book, or I should have ventured to send it to you : 

 a young Dianthus was attached to its column about a quarter of an inch from the base, 

 with a disk at least half an inch in diameter. I noticed that if I touched the tentacles 

 of the largest flower, both felt the shock and contracted ; or if I fed the small one, 

 the larger Dianthus began to draw in its tentacles and close up, and I saw the food 

 moving up and down, as if in a liquid state, in the large column. Then again, if I 

 fed the mother Dianthus, the tiny one contracted, and would expand with the same 

 translucency afterwards, as the Dianthus usually does on being fed. There wasjno ridge 

 or contraction that would warrant the separation afterwards of the two animals, the 

 column of the smaller Dianthus seeming merely a bulging out of one side of 

 the larger one. Brown or chocolate-coloured Sagartia bellis, with vermilion-streaked 

 disks, and columns shading from flesh-colour to pinky violet where the suckers com- 

 mence, I also found in great quantities on the same rocks : also S. Troglodytes, such as 

 described at plate 2, figure 5 of your work j and I have no doubt that there are many 

 other species of Anemones in the same place, but the tide flows so rapidly at this par- 

 ticular point that I have as yet but half explored its hanging rocks. Having once or 

 twice, when in search of sea-weeds and Lucernaria, come upon a solitary floating 

 Sagartia sphyrodeta on rocks uncovered at ordinary low tides, I felt persuaded that 

 there must be a colony of them somewhere near, and soon I found them. On 

 a stretch of perpendicidar mud-covered rock, close to the Horse Rock point, I counted 

 a hundred and seventy in one space, not averaging more than a yard in width 

 and height, and since then I have found another numerous colony of the white-disked 

 Sphyrodeta. Should you like to see any of the varieties which I have mentioned, I 

 shall be very happy to send them to you, as I have had Sagartia sphyrodeta and 

 viduata, as well as all sized Plumose Anemones, in perfect health, for six months. 

 Last month Lucernarise were to be found here in such quantities that one could scarcely 

 take up a piece of Ulva without finding two or three. I kept two alive for a week 

 without feeding, as I noticed that after one of their voracious meals the animal 

 immediately grew drowsy, — if the word can be used — flaccid, and by next day 

 it loosened its hold on the Ulva and was dead. — Selina Hume Macleod ; 24, The 

 Strand, Dawlish, September 24, 1860. (Communicated by P. H. Gosse, Esq., F.R.S.) 



Physalia pelagica at Torquay. — My neighbour, Lieutenant Hughes, R.N., has just 

 showed me a specimen of the Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia pelagica), so familiar 

 to all who traverse the warmer regions of the Atlantic. The bladder is about five 



