[Read before the Otago Institute, 11th June, 1877.]

I Should not have chosen such a pretentious title for this paper, but that I wished to include in it descriptions of the three New Zealand sea anemones that have not been found near Dunedin. The sea anemones are animals that can only be described from living specimens; they must be collected, brought home alive, and placed in water before their structure and colour can be seen, and when they are dead there is no known means of preserving them so as to be of any use. To enable observers, therefore, in any part of the colony away from libraries, to describe these animals, I have included in this paper not only descriptions of all the New Zealand species not described in our Transactions, but also an analysis of all the known genera.

Tentacles of two kinds; simple and compound. Oulactis (M. Edwards).

Column with warts. Compound tentacles placed round the margin of the disc, and outside the simple tentacles.

Oulactis plicatus, sp. nov.

Column cylindrical, not much expanded at the base, about as high as broad; warts arranged vertically in numerous (80 or 100) rows. Brownish yellow, with the warts dirty white. Disc circular, concave; the margin, when expanded, thrown into five deep folds. Crimson, radiately streaked with yellow near the margin. The simple tentacles are conical, about two-thirds of an inch in length, and arranged in two rows. They are transparent, of a violet or greenish colour, and often with opaque whitish transverse bands on the interior aspect. The compound tentacles are in a single row, and about two-thirds the length of the simple tentacles. They are white, and multi-lobed, the lobes being subcylindrical and rounded at the ends.

Height about 2 ½ in. when extended. In rock-pools on the coast, near Dunedin.

The animal fastens pieces of broken shells, small stones, etc., to its column, and when retracted looks like a small heap of gravel. The compound tentacles are not sensitive. Its nearest ally is Metridium muscosum Drayton, from New South Wales, which Milne-Edwards and Haime have placed in their genus Oulactis. Occasionally some of the lobes of the compound tentacles are pink or orange.

All the tentacles simple. Column pierced with loop-holes.

Gregoria, Gosse.

Disc imperfectly retractile; column smooth, without suckers, perforated by a few large loop-holes.

Gregoria albocincta, sp. nov.

Column cylindrical, broader than high; yellowish-orange, vertically striped with yellowish-green, each band having a central line of darker green. Disc circular; reddish orange or brick red, radially streaked with darker; margin not beaded; mouth elevated, round; throat ribbed. Tentacles in four indistinct rows round the disc, short, about half the diameter of the disc, conical with blunt points, and often much swollen at the base. Their colour is opaque white. Diameter, about .3 or .4 of an inch.

Common in rock-pools near Dunedin. Sometimes the column is vertically streaked with red and white.

All the tentacles simple. Column imperforate, and smooth. Margin of disc not beaded.

Paractis, M. Edwards.

Column naked. Tentacles retractile, subulate, sub-equal.

Paractis monilifera.

Actinia monilifera, Drayton in Dana Expl. Exp., Zooph., p. 136.

Paractis monilifera, M. Ed., Corall. I., p. 248.

Column broader than high, dilated at both extremities, where the exterior surface has moniliform rugosities, of a pale brown with deeper lines. Tentacles longer than the disc, in three rows; ringed with brown and white. Disc yellowish.

Bay of Islands.

Anthea, Johnstone.

Column short, expanded at the base, surface wrinkled. No suckers, warts, nor loop-holes. Tentacles numerous, submarginal, scarcely retractile.

Anthea olivacea, sp. nov.

Column short, broad, and expanded at the base, slightly horizontally wrinkled; of an olive green colour down to the base. Disc circular, concave, with the mouth slightly raised; of a darker green than the column and