Ad’INIiE, 
Z. HELIANTHOIDA. 
227 
ing thus at a single litter. An embryo extracted artificially from the 
amputated tip of a tentaculum, began to breed in fourteen months, and 
survived nearly five years. Monstrosities by excess are not uncom- 
mon among the young : one produced naturally, consisting of two 
perfect bodies, and their parts sustained by a single base, exhibited 
embryos in the tentacula at ten months, bred in twelve, and lived 
above five years. While one body was gorged with food, the other 
continued ravenous.”* * * § These facts are to be explained on the sup- 
position that the ova have been detained and developed in the inter- 
septal spaces, for it is very well ascertained that the creatures are 
truly oviparous. The ovum, under ordinary circumstances, is recog- 
nizable as the young of an Actinia about twenty days from the 
Fig. 34. 
time of its separation. | It has at first very few tentacula, — from 
four to twelve, arranged in a single row, but they gradually germi- 
nate in greater numbers, and arrange themselves in two or more im- 
perfect circular series a fact which strikingly illustrates the futili- 
ty of that classification which mainly rests the distinction of its ge- 
nera upon the number of these circles. § 
The Actiniae are very patient of injuries, and rival the Hydra in 
their reproductive powers. They may be kept without food for up- 
wards of a year ; they may be immersed in water hot enough to 
blister their skin, or frozen in a mass of ice and again thawed ; and 
they may be placed within the exhausted receiver of the air pump, 
without being deprived of life, or disabled from resuming their usu- 
al functions when placed in a favourable situation. If the tenta- 
cula are clipped off they soon begin to bud anew, and if again cut away 
they grow again, so that “ it seems these reproductions might ex- 
tend as far, or be as often repeated as patience and curiosity would 
admit.” If cut transversely through the middle, the lower portion of 
* Rep. Brit. Assoc, an. 1834, p. 599 ; and Edin. New Phil. Journ. xvii. 
p. 411. 
f Dalyell in Edin. New Phil. Journ. xxi. p. 89, 90. 
$ Dalyell in Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, art. “ Animal Flower,” p. 132. Tem- 
pleton in Mag. Nat. Hist. ix. 303 ; and Harvey in ibid. n. s. i. p. 474. 
§ Brandt. A Synopsis of his System is given by Blainville. Actinologie, 
p. 666. 
