56 
BLUEFIELDS. 
thuricB of various sizes and species lay on the bottom, 
as inert as usual. 
On another occasion I found a large mass of soft 
coral-rock, lying in the water, dead. On being 
broken it was found to be perforated by cavities 
inhabited by two species of Pholas, two species of 
Sipunculus, and some Annellida, which I judged to be 
of the genus Syllis, One of the Sipunculi had a long 
slender body inhabiting a membranous tube, and 
communicated with the surface of the stone, whence 
it protruded its tentacles in the form of a circular 
disk of great beauty ; the individual tentacles radiat- 
ing from the centre, and the whole disk marked with 
alternate concentric lines of light and dark hue. The 
other species, which was larger, when put into a 
vessel of sea-water, protruded by the evolution of the 
integument a long neck, bearing at the extremity a 
similar tentacular apparatus. I brought home several 
of these in a bottle of water, preserved pure by the 
presence of some sea-weeds, together with two hand- 
some Actinias of a reddish-brown hue, with white 
warts. The Annellida were remarkable for the ease 
and agility which they now and then displayed in 
swimming, throwing their lengthened bodies into the 
most elegant serpentine curves.* 
* The diversified animals seen by Captain Basil Hall on coral, in 
his voyage to Loo Choo, and described by him in a passage very 
interesting and often quoted, were certainly parasites analogous to 
those above mentioned, and not the worms that form the coral, as the 
Captain seems to have thought them. From his description I should 
take them to be Ophiurai, HolothuricE, Sipunculi (or perhaps some 
Annellida), naked Mollusca, and macrurous Crustacea ; — the very forms 
which I have enumerated above. 
