406 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



VoGTiA pentacantha Kolliker. 

 Plate 4, fig. 1. 



Vogtia pentacantha Kolliker, 1853, p. 31, tab. 8; Kefferstein & Ehlers, 1861, 

 p. 23, taf. 5, fig. 12-15; Chun, 1897b, p. 35, taf. 1, fig. 11-14; Bigelow, 

 1911a, p. 351; Moser, 1915b, p. 653. 



?Non Vogtia pentacantha Bigelow, 1913, p. 66, pi. 5, fig. 7-9, pi. 6, fig. 6. 



Station 10,206, 400-0 meters, one much contracted colony with 

 about 13 nectophores still attached. 



This example is in excellent condition, except for being contracted. 



On the older nectophores (Plate 4, fig. 1) the facets are perfectly 

 smooth, but the angles between them bear varying numbers of conical 

 gelatinous tubercles just as in the specimens collected by the Research 

 (1911a, p. 351), and by the Plankton expedition (Chun, 1897b). 

 Occasionall}^ a tubercle apparently belongs to a facet, not to an angle; 

 but this appearance is the result of contraction. I may further point 

 out, as substantiating Moser's (1913a) statement that V. pentacantha 

 is intermediate between V. spinosa and V. serrata, that not only the 

 sculpture of the nectophores, but the structure of the ventral sinus, 

 is intermediate between the two. As I have already shown (1913), 

 the ventral sinus in V. spinosa (adult nectophores) is in the form of two 

 lateral wings, narrowest next the ventral subumbral canal, whereas 

 in the Bering Sea specimens, identified by me as V. pentacantha, but 

 which really belong to V. serrata (if that species prove valid), it is 

 reduced, in the old nectophores, to a slight thickening of the ventral 

 canal. In the oldest nectophores of the present specimen we find a 

 condition mid-way between these two extremes, the ventral sinus 

 (Plate 4, fig. 1) being much smaller than in V. spinosa nectophores of 

 a corresponding age, but nevertheless extending on either side of the 

 canal as a short wing. Young nectophores of this specimen are 

 spinous on facets as well as angles ; in fact are indistinguishable from 

 nectophores of V. spinosa of corresponding age, thus corroborating 

 Moser (1913a). In all other respects the specimen so closely re- 

 sembles V. spinosa that no further account is needed, except to point 

 out that the relationship of the nectophores, and the elongated 

 "knospungszone" on which they are borne, is exactly the same as 

 in other members of Vogtia (1911b, 1913) and in Hippopodius (Chun, 

 1897a, Bigelow, 1913). 



