Royal Physical Society. 71 



were pushed aside the brilliant colours of the Actinias ren- 

 dered them very conspicuous, and at once assured me that I 

 had discovered a new species. The largest specimens, when 

 fully extended, measure about 2J inches in length by 1 J inch 

 in diameter. The body is a rich orange brown marked with 

 white spots. These spots, which are very small at the foot of 

 the animal, increase in size as they approach the disk. They 

 are arranged along faint yellowish lines which run parallel to 

 each other from the base to the disk. The ground colour of the 

 disk is generally a uniform deep purple-brown, which passes 

 between the tentacles and marks their base with irregular 

 lines and reticulations, but in some specimens the uniformity 

 of colour is broken by irregular cloudy patches of transparent 

 pearly white. The labial lobes of the mouth are orange, and 

 are placed in the centre of a star of sixty fulvous rays, thirty 

 longer and thirty shorter placed alternately ; the long rays are 

 slightly forked at their extremities, like the scales of a moth's 

 wing ; the short ones terminate in a rectangular point. The ten- 

 tacles, about two hundred in number, are arranged in five rows ; 

 the four inner rows are grayish-white, encircled by broad bands 

 of pale purple-brown. The outer row consists of about one hun- 

 dred closely-set tentacles, half the length of the inner rows ; 

 their colour is gray, but about three-fourths of their upper sur- 

 face is coloured from the base towards the tip by a broad patch 

 of orange-red (red-lead). Actinia omata, when irritated, 

 ejects fulvous threads in great profusion from the mouth and the 

 pores in its body into which they are again withdrawn. These 

 threads are covered with the usual urticating cells, and writhe 

 about as they depend from the animal. They are moved partly 

 by the contractility of their walls, which throws them into spiral 

 coils, and partly by the cilia with which their surfaces are 

 covered. They attach themselves with considerable tenacity 

 to any animal substances with which they come in contact, 

 and no doubt constitute a formidable apparatus for defence. 



Four young ones, produced by as many specimens of Actinia 

 omata in the last six months, were born with a double row of 

 tentacles, the inner long, the outer short and tinged with 

 orange-red as in the adult. The figures in Plate VI., en- 



