EASTERN COAST OF THE UNITED STATES. 



23 



3. Umber brown, with plain, dark slate-colored tentacles. 



4. Umber broAvn ; tentacles light slate, having a ring of white near their bases. 



5. Umber, with white tentacles. 



6. Yellowish umber ; tentacles a lighter tint of the same. 



7. Column irregularly blotched and mottled with brown on a whitish ground color ; ten- 

 tacles light grayish brown. 



8. White or very light flesh-colored throughout. 



9. Yellowish red or brick-red, with flesh-colored tentacles. 



Very young specimens are slender in expansion, with long slender tentacles, which are 

 not crowded. The disk is not undulated, and there is no apparent fold on the column. 

 Their color is uniform yellowish white or flesh-color. Specimens of about half an inch in 

 diameter show indications of the characteristic fold or thickening of the wall, but have the 

 disk scarcely undulated. Their tentacles are long and slender, considerably crowded, and 

 often marked by a longitudinal dark line. They are frequently lengthened to a very 

 great extent when expanded. 



The larger specimens commonly met with are about 4 inches high in ordinary expan- 

 sion ; 3 broad across the disk ; 1.50 at the centre of the column ; inner tentacles .50 in 

 length ; outer .10 to .20. Specimens of much larger size are occasionally found. 



Kange, from Buzzard's Bay, Long Island Sound, and near New York, to Gaspe, Canada 

 East. (Coll. Mus. Comp. Zool.) 



This species is very closely allied to M. dianthus of Europe and by some writers has been 

 considered the same. A careful examination of living specimens of the latter in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology, forwarded from the Free Public Museum of Liverpool, through 

 the kindness of Capt. J. Anderson, and a direct comparison with others of M. marginata, has 

 convinced me, that, though very similar in appearance, they are perfectly distinct. In M. 

 dianthus the inner tentacles are more scattered over the disk, leaving a more limited central 

 area free from them than in our species, in which they consequently appear more concen- 

 trated towards the margin of the disk. The tentacles are also smaller in the former 

 and more delicate than in individuals of the same size of the latter. The margin of the 

 disk in the specimens examined of M. dianthus appeared more numerously and deeply 

 frilled than in any specimens that I have seen of 31. marginata. The margin of the mouth 

 of the latter is nearly always of the same color as the column, but of a lighter tint ; while 

 in the former it is said by Gosse to be " generally rufous or orange red, whatever the hue 

 of the body." 



This opinion has been much strengthened by the testimony of Dr. Wm. Stimpson, who 

 has had unrivalled opportunities for the study of the marine invertebrata, both on this coast 

 and on that of Great Britain, for I have been assured by him that he has found the differ- 

 ence in the arrangement of the inner tentacles constant among hundreds of specimens of 

 both species, which he has examined. He therefore considers them sufficiently distinct. 



The Fringed Actinia is the most abundant species along the whole coast of New Eng- 

 land and the Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. It ranges in depth from low- 

 water mark to thirty fathoms, and is often, also, found attached to the sides of fissures and in 

 rocky pools between tides, particularly in places sheltered from the sun. Not unfrequently 

 it is seen attached in large numbers to the piles of wharves at or just below low-water 

 mark ; but its favorite haunts are rocky situations or bottoms covered by stones of moder- 

 ate size. In the Bay of Fundy it is particularly abundant and grows to a very large size. 

 At Mount Desert, on the coast of Maine, I have seen, during a very low tide, a rocky bot- 



