A history of the British sea-anemones and corals / by Philip Henry Gosse.

  • Gosse, Philip Henry, 1810-1888.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of the British sea-anemones and corals / by Philip Henry Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the corallum wholly clothed with the scarlet integument, even down to the base. The covering was exceedingly rliin, for with a needle-point I could feel the stony corallum without any sensible indentation of the surface, and the points at the margin were projecting. I have no information about the reproduction of the species, except such as may be gathered from the following- observation. In the month of September, in a vase in which several specimens were kept, and which contained nothing else to which I could reasonably attribute the phenomenon, I found several clusters of ova. Each cluster consisted of about a dozen, loosely aggregated, and all con- nected by a kind of twisted cord, which formed a footstalk for each. The eggs were perfectly globular, -^th of an inch in diameter, of a pellucid orange-yellow hue. One of them under the microscope showed the contents granular, and receding from the chorion, with a definite outline. None of them developed the embryo to my knowledge. The genus was established by Mr. Wood in 1844, to receive a fossil species from the Red Crag of Sutton. It now contains eleven species, most of them fossil, but one exists in the Italian seas, and two others elsewhere. There is none with which B. regia can be confounded. The generic name is derived from /3a\avo?, an acorn or nut, and cjivWov, a leaf, and the specific alludes to the royal colours in which the animal is arrayed. Ilfracombe, P. H. G.; Lundy, C. K. REGIA. [cylindrica (foss.).]