Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/238

Rh head of fine slender tentacles crowded together in seeming confusion.

When more carefully examined the membranous disk appears to be really circular in outline; the mouth, an oval orifice with crenated lips, is not placed on a cone; delicate lines, as usual, radiate from it. The innermost tentacles are placed at about half an inch from the mouth (in a large specimen); these are scattered irregularly and loosely; others succeed, more thickly, until towards the margin they become a dense fringe defying enumeration. The innermost ones are stouter than the outermost: the length of both varies much in specimens of the same size;—sometimes being not more than one fourth of an inch long, at others thrice this length.

The whole texture is somewhat pellucid, especially on the oral disk and the tentacles: the outer covering of the body appears sub-coriaceous, though soft and mucous.

In Weymouth Bay this species is very common, and still more abundant in the deeper water of the offing; both the dredge and the trawl constantly bringing up single specimens and clustered groups. The latter are sometimes very numerous, as many as twenty being not uncommonly crowded on a single oyster-shell. Of course such a group on so limited a space, must include a good many small ones; generally they are of all sizes, from the gigantic forefather of the family to the tiny great-grandchildren that are scattered round his base, no larger than peas. In general all the members of each group are of the same hue; as they are I presume strictly one family