45 



ON A NEW FRESH-WATER POLYZOON FROM 



RHODESIA, LOPHOPODELLA THOMAS I, 



gen. et sp. nov. 



By Charles F. Rousselet, F.R.M.S. 

 {Bead January 15M, 1901.) 



Plate 3. 



Up to quite recent times not a single species of fresh-water 

 Polyzoa was known from the continent of Africa. To Dr. 

 Stuhlmann is due the credit of having been the first to discover 

 representatives of this class in Egypt, and later in German East 

 Africa (24), between the years 1890 and 1892. These were 

 Fredericella and Pluinatella, and also some statoblasts of Hyatt's 

 Pectinatella carter i, a species previously known only from India. 

 Then in 1893 and 1897, Dr. M. Meissner (23) found sessile 

 statoblasts of Plumatella on some shells of fresh-water molluscs,, 

 preserved in the Berlin Museum, which had come from East 

 and West Africa, and this completes the whole known records, 

 of fresh-water Polyzoa in Africa to the present time. 



In October last, one of our members, Mr. R. H. Thomas, of 

 Salisbury, Rhodesia, sent me a little bottle containing a 

 gelatinous mass which, he said, was a fresh-water Polyzoon 

 collected early in 1900, and preserved in alcohol. The polypides 

 were all decayed, but in a piece of the gelatinous zoarium the 

 hollow tracts which they had occupied can well be seen (Fig. 1), 

 and in these branching tracts, which preserve the shape of 

 the entocyst, I found a number of peculiar statoblasts in all 

 stages of growth. An examination of these enabled me to inform 

 Mr. Thomas at once that a Polyzoon having such statoblasts was 

 not known in England, but I could not at the time say if any 

 such form had been described in any other part of the world. 

 Since then I have looked up all the recent literature on the 

 subject, and have also made enquiries of specialists, and am now 

 in a position to say that this is undoubtedly a new species, for 

 which a new genus must be created, and moreover, it is the first 



