VlRGULARIA. 
Z. ASTEROIDA. 
179 
in sea water, and have observed them at all hours, without once de- 
tecting them in a voluntary emission of the flame. It proceeds solely 
from the polypes themselves, and can only be elicited by mechanical 
irritations, which have no sooner ceased than the phosphorescence 
declines and dies away. 
“ Spangling the waves with lights as vain 
As pleasures in this vale of pain, 
That dazzle as they fade.” 
Sir W- Scott. 
13. Virgularia,* Lamarck. 
Character. — Polype-mass free , linear-elongate , “ support- 
ing , towards the upper extremity , sessile lunate lohes embracing 
the stem obliquely , and bearing a row of cells on their margin.” 
1. V. mirabilis, stem filiform, with alternate lobes transverse- 
ly ridged.” Mr Simmons. *f* 
Plate XXIV. 
Pennatula mirabilis, Lin. Syst. 1322. Mull. Zool. Dan. prod. 255, no- 
3074. — Zool. Dan. tab. 11, fig. 1-3. Ellis and Soland. Zooph. 63. 
Sowerby , Brit. Misc. 51, pi. 25. Turt. Brit. Faun. 217, Jameson in 
Wern. Mem. i. 565. Stew. Elem. ii, 450. Eosc, Vers, iii. 62 
Virgularia mirabilis, Lam. Anim. s. vert. ii. 430, 2de edit. ii. 647. Flem. 
Brit. Anim. 507. Grant in Edin. Journ. of Science, no. 14. Stark, 
Elem. ii. 420. Scirpearia mirabilis, Templeton in Mag. Nat. Hist. ix. 
470 La Virgulaire a ailes laches, Blainv. Actinol. 514, pi. 90, fig. 3. 
Hah. Dredged up by Mr Simmons off Inch-Keith, Sowerby. Pres- 
tonpans Bay, Jameson. “ On the east and north coast of Scotland, 
where it is believed by the fishermen to have one end lodged erect in 
the mud ; in Zetland it is called the Sea-rush,” Fleming. Dredged 
up in Belfast Lough, Templeton. 
“ Seems to represent a quill stripped of its feathers. The base 
looks like a pen in this as in the other species, swelling a little from 
the end, and then tapering. The upper part is thicker, with alter- 
nate semicircular pectinated swellings, larger towards the middle, ta- 
pering upwards, and terminating in a thin bony substance, which 
passes through the whole.” Sowerby. — “ From 6 to 10 inches 
in length.” “ They perfectly correspond in form and external ap- 
pearance with the elegant coloured figure given by Muller. Their 
axis is calcareous, solid, white, brittle, flexible, cylindrical, of equal 
* Formed from Virgula, the diminutive of Virga — a rod. 
f “ A young man who has since fallen a sacrifice to his zeal for Natural His- 
tory in the West Indies.” — Leach. He was, I believe, a native of Edinburgh. 
