The ova are round, yellow, and like little grains of sand. Ellis Reaumur, Dicquemare, and Spix, all assert t'hat Actiniw are vivipa rous. The latter observer states, " I have several times seen them issue from the mouth of their parent perfectly formed. An Actinia that I have in spirit of wine contains a great number of eggs, each marked with an opaque spot that seems to contain the young animal. I have even one individual not larger than a hemp-seed, which seems hardly ready to quit its envelope, having neither the mouth nor the tentacula perfectly distinct. Moreover, I suspect that the eggs are sometimes hatched in the ovaria or in the stomach, and some times out of the parent. I am not sure but the animal may at the time.of the expulsion of the eggs have its stomach turned inside out." The number of eggs must be prodigious, each Actinia possessing upwards of a hundred ovaria.
It appears from recent researches that the Actiniform polypes are bisexual.
It is rendered extremely probable by the very advanced condition of the muscular ap paratus in the Actinia that they likewise possess a nervous system. Spix in his ex periments employed galvanism, which rnade the animal contract convulsively, and finding that the contractions were strongest in the neighbourhood of the base of the animal he was led to search for it in this part, and con ceived that he had 'discovered it in this situ ation. " Having raised by a slight incision the longitudinal muscles at their union in the middle of the base, I perceived with a magni fying glass an interlacement formed by some pairs of nodules disposed around the centre which communicated by several cylindrical threads ; from each nodule two filaments ran forwards ; _one was seen to run along the muscle, the other to pierce it, to divide into two branches, and, lastly, to lose itself in the longitudinal cavity formed by the floating muscles. The situation of the nodules and
filaments is beneath the stomach, and their round figure would not allow me to confound them with the muscles, which are broad and riband-shaped, and still less as the latter putrified rapidly, while the former remained entire."* Some of' the tropical Actinimt, which oc casionally measure a foot in diameter, pro duce a stinging sensation when they are handled, and this stinging property is even communicated to the water that they absorb. There is moreover one remarkable circum stance connected with it ; namely, that it acts much more powerfully upon the skin, which it inflames, than upon the mucous membranes, and a drop received into the eye causes much less pain than when applied to the eyelids.
The Actinim, although exceedingly vora cious, will bear long fasting : they may be pre served alive a whole year, or perhaps longer, in a vessel of sea-water; but when food is pre sented one of them will devour two mussels in their shells or a crab as large as a hen's egg. In a day or two the shell is voided at the month perfectly cleared of the meat.
Their power of reproducing lost parts is scarcely inferior to that of the Hydrx. The Abbe Dicquemare describes some experi ments on this subject, and states that when a horizontal section is made through one of these creatures the tentacles still seized and swallowed food, which sometimes passed through the body, at other times was expelled from the mouth digested. In about two months tentacles grew from the other portion, and it ate food, soon becoming a perfect ani mal. He states that in this way he even succeeded in making an Actinia with a mouth and tentacles at both ends !