190 
Z. ASTEROIDA. 
Alcyonium. 
The ova are placed in the polype- tubes ; they are white at first, 
but ultimately become of a scarlet colour, opake, globular, and about 
the size of a grain of sand. Each ovum is filled with a mass of ex- 
tremely minute pellucid granules, and is ultimately discharged through 
the mouth. They seem to be produced in spring and summer, for 
in June and July I have seen many specimens with not more than 
three or five polypes developed, and these are as large and perfect as 
the polypes of the oldest specimens. 
Dr Fleming is of opinion, that the Alcyonium lobatum of La- 
mouroux, whose figure I have quoted without any mark of doubt, is a 
perfectly distinct species, because its tentacula “ are sub-cylindrical, 
rounded at the extremity, and covered above and on the margin with 
blunt tubercles;” whereas of the British Alcyonium “ the tentacula 
in Ellis’s figures (and, having compared these with nature, we can 
pronounce on their accuracy,) are pinnate and pointed.” But of 
these figures of Ellis’s, it may be observed that the one he has given 
in his essay on Corallines * is very unlike the figure of the same 
parts in his Nat. Hist, of Zoophytes ; and I must acknowledge that 
neither of them correspond with what 1 have myself seen. When a 
specimen of Alcyonium digitatum is placed in a vessel of sea-water, 
the polypes protrude themselves amazingly, and extend their tenta- 
cula, which are thick, obtuse, grooved along the centre, and not long- 
er than the diameter of the oral disk, being in fact very like what 
they are represented to be by Lamouroux ; but when these organs 
are removed and slightly pressed between plates of glass, they be- 
come so much elongated that I can readily believe they may, when 
the animal is active and in its native site, assume the shape and ap- 
pearance of Ellis’s latter figure. And I am thus drawn to the con- 
clusion that the differences in the different figures will not justify the 
establishment of distinct species, but are to be attributed to the ani- 
mal being in different states when observed, — a conclusion which a 
writer in the Encyclop. Method. Supp. p. 497, has also come to. 
“ Les figures donnees par Ellis, Spix et Lamouroux ne se ressemblent 
guere ; je pense neammoins que cette difference ne peut etre rapportee 
a aucune inexactitude, mais depend de 1’etat du polype a 1’instant ou 
il a ete dessine.” 
The Alcyonium rubrum of Midler defined to be “ crust aceum, 
molle, miniatum, punctis sparsis saturatioribus” — Zool. Dan. prod. 
255, no. 3081, — is, moreover, surely nothing else but this species in 
its primary crustaceous condition, and of a reddish-orange colour, as 
* This figure it appears, was taken from specimens which had been immers- 
ed in spirits. Introd. to Corall- p. xii. 
3 
