MR. GOSSE ON PEACHIA HASTATA. 269 



as to conceal and envelope the body. As this protrusion proceeded, I found that these 

 bands were not the ovaries, as I at first supposed, but were attached to them. The ovaries 

 were protruded also in the form of thick tubes, much convoluted, and of a salmon-colour, 

 studded with minute white specks. These tubes were filled to distension with their 

 contents, and were consequently plump, at least at one edge ; for, as well as I could 

 judge, they ran off at the opposite edge into a broad, exceedingly attenuated, gelatinous 

 ribbon. Along the thickened and tubular edge was attached the capsuliferous band, as a 

 mesentery ; this also having a thickened margin, but differing in structure, as well as in 

 appearance from the former. It was narrower and much more convolved ; the edge lying 

 in pretty regular figure-of-8 turns, or scrolls, like the frill of a cap ; the colour of this 

 band was dull yellowish, with the thickened border white. This border was, as I have 

 said above, principally composed of thread-capsules ; but in the salmon-red tubes I found 

 none of these organs. They were filled with ova, enveloped in a red mucus, which gave 

 the colour not only to the tubes themselves, but also to the body of the animal. These 

 ova were globose or pear-shaped bodies, very soft and elastic, the largest measuring ^jth 

 of an inch in length, by ra^h in diameter ; while others (of the globose form) probably 

 less advanced, were not more than Tyrth of an inch in diameter. Indeed they rather re- 

 sembled the planules of a Plumularia or Antennularia than proper ova, except that they 

 had no motion, and were not ciliated. They consisted of a granular brown substance, 

 becoming clear and colourless at the circumference. I could see no trace of a nucleus in 

 any, either with or without pressure. 



The animals, so burst and apparently dead, I allowed to remain in a dish of pure sea- 

 water, with a growing leaf of Ulva, to preserve its vitality. To my surprise, they at 

 length were evidently everted, turned (by the continuance of the process of protrusion 

 through the ruptured integument) completely inside out, so that the membranous septa 

 of the interior now projected from the circumference ; while from each interseptal space 

 protruded the convoluted ovaries, with their mesenteries and frilled bands. Nor did it 

 appear that death had really ensued. As an animal, an individual, I could not consider 

 it otherwise than deceased ; for it was become a shapeless mass of viscera, from which the 

 original integuments were sloughing, in films of glairy membrane. But no putrescence 

 had set in ; and on examination with a lens, through the sides of a glass vase, to which I 

 had early removed the specimens, I found in each one, twelve days after they had been in 

 this dissolved state, that the ovaries maintained a perfectly clear, plump, healthy 

 appearance (fig. 6), with a more vivid rose-tint than at first ; and that the frilled bands 

 were slowly, but constantly, moving all over them; puckering and unfolding their 

 involutions, and altering their forms, by means of the cilia with which they were covered ; 

 — a beautiful provision for the respiration, so to speak, of the yet undeveloped embryos, 

 by the perpetual passage of currents of the surrounding water along the ovaries. 



I was thus forcibly reminded of the mode in which the oviposition is effected in that 

 little lovely Medusa, Turris neglecta, — by the protrusion of the ovary, and the eversion 

 and gradual dissolution of the umbrella, as I have elsewhere described and figured* ; a 

 process, which I have now reason to believe is common to the higher kinds, at least, of 



* Devonshire Coast, p. 352. 



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