Part II.—Stichodactyline and Zoanthee. 175 
Actinoporus elegans, Duchassaing. 
(LPL Kop M1 Og JE, Wioy Hee, GE IPL rain mes, By Oe IP, saiyrq we, Bs IPL sqQyoy ile, Wo) 
Actinoporus elegans, . . . Duchassaing, 1850, p. 10; Milne-Edwards, 1857, 
p. 277; Duchassaing and Michelotti, 1860, 
p. 46, pl. vu, fig. 6; 1866, p. 132. 
Aureliania elegans, . . . Andres, 1883, p. 497. 
The base is buried to a considerable depth in sand and gravel, and is thin- 
walled, the lines of attachment of the mesenteries showing through ; towards the 
margin it may also be deeply grooved in correspondence with the mesenteries. In 
diameter it is scarcely larger than the column. 
The column is greatly elongated, cylindrical, smooth, strongly ridged and 
grooved above and below, and, but for a thin opaque whiteness, nearly transparent. 
A row of circular transparent verruce occurs on all the ridges, rendered very 
evident by the absence of the opaque whiteness, they appear more like vesicles 
in the preserved polyp. Along some ridges the transparent discs are not 
so perfectly circular as on others, and they may be in more than a single series, or 
even become contiguous. In the preserved condition the column is coarsely 
wrinkled transversely, less so longitudinally, and is of greater diameter above than 
below. A smooth, deep fossa exists between the marginal verruce and the 
tentacles. 
The disc is flat or partly folded, not much broader than the column, and made 
up of forty-eight long, radiating, triangular areas, separated one from the other by 
deep, smooth sulci. A small, central area is naked and smooth. ‘The areas bear 
extremely short, capitate or spheroidal tentacles, which seem to be little more 
than small vesicular outgrowths of the disc. These are often bifurcated or lobed, 
and extend from the fossa to near the mouth, increasing a little in size from within 
outwards. Odd smaller vesicles occur among the larger. Over the greater part of 
the disc the tentacles arrange themselves approximately in two rows along each 
side of a radiating area, but they communicate in an irregular manner with the 
ceelenteron. ‘Towards the centre of the disc they form but a single row along the 
middle of the radiations. Some rows extend slightly more centrally than others, 
but no serial arrangement can be distinguished. 
As a whole the tentacles give to the disc, both in the living and preserved 
condition, a finely beaded appearance ; peripherally they completely hide its 
actual surface, but are more distant towards the middle. They possess apparently 
no power of retraction, and communicate with both the endocceles and exocceles, 
2C 2 
