was an irregularly shaped knobby spicule, precisely similar to those which are charôÙacôÙterôÙisôÙtic of the Alcyonaria22.
The rough spicules of the Alcyonaria are extraordinarily variable in shape and size, as, looking at them from the chemistãs or the physicistãs point of view, we should expect them to be. Partly upon the form of these spicules, and partly on the general form or mode of branching of the entire colony
of polypes, a vast number of separate ãspeciesã have been based by systematic zoologists. But it is now admitted that even in specimens of a single species, from one and the same locality, the spicules