102 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1889. 



A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ACTINOLOGY OF THE BERMUDAS. 

 BY J. PLAYFAIR MCMURRICH, PH. D. 



I recently received from Professor Heilprin a number of Actinians 

 which he had collected in the summer of 1888, during a visit to the 

 Bermuda Islands. They were entrusted to me for identification and 

 study, and I gladly availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded 

 of comparing the Actinian fauna of the Bermudas with that of the 

 Bahamas, which I had previously studied* I may state here that, 

 so far as can be judged from the material studied, there is very great 

 similarity between the two faunas, most of the species from the Ber- 

 mudas occurring also either in the Bahamas or in the West Indian 

 Islands. Unfortunately it was impossible to adopt the best 

 methods of preserving the material obtained in the Bermudas, the 

 expedition to the islands having been undertaken mainly for geo- 

 logical purposes, and consequently the specific relationships of some 

 of the forms could not be determined with perfect certainty. 



Tribe HEXACTINI^. 



Sub- tribe ACTININAL. 



Family SAGARTIDJE. 



1. Aiptasia. sp? (PI. VI, figs. 1 and 2.) 



In the collection were four specimens of a form which I refer to 

 the genus Aiptasia, inasmuch as in the majority of respects they 

 resemble forms of that genus, although it was impossible to ascer- 

 tain the presence of an equatorial row of cinclides owing to the 

 ectoderm having been almost completely macerated away. Nema- 

 tocysts were quite abundant in the macerated substance contained 

 in the inter- and intra-mesenterial chambers, but it was not possible 

 to be certain that they belonged to acontia though such was proba- 

 bly the case. 



The specimens are about 1 cm. in length and 0.65 cm. in diameter. 

 The color as ascertained from the alcoholic material is in the upper 

 one-third of the column and in the tentacles grass-green, while the 

 rest of the column presents the dirty grayish-brown color frequent 

 in alcoholic specimens. About one-third of the way down the col- 



*Sve Journal of Morphology, vol. iii. This paper is now in print and will 

 shortly appear. 



