Hermia. Z HYDROIDA. Ill 



The clavate rose-ivd specimens I have generally found between 

 tide marks, and the white ones with a long filiform stalk on dead 

 shells dredged from deeper water. On the latter is undoubtedly 

 founded the " Hydra capitata aiha, pedunculo riigoso longo, cir- 

 ris capitis longitiidine" of MuUer ; while the former answer better 

 to his H. squamata, but although at one time disposed to consider 

 them distinct, I am now satisfied of their identity as species, for they 

 graduate so insensibly into one another as to lose even the character 

 of fixed varieties. I am also led to suspect that the H. brevicornis 

 and viinuticornis of Muller, Zool. Dan. prod. p. 230, will be found 

 to be modifications of this species. 



The Hydra Tuba of Sir J. G. Dalyell probably belongs to this 

 genus, and may be distinguished by its tentacula being much longer 

 than the body. It inhabits the Frith of Forth near Edinburghj where 

 its natural abode seems the internal concavity of the upper oyster- 

 shell. It extends " about two inches in whole, with its long white 

 tentacula waving like a beautiful silken pencil in the water. It pro- 

 pagates by an external shapeless bud issuing fi'om the side of the pa- 

 rent, and withdrawing, though very long connected by a ligament, 

 on approaching maturity. In thirteen months a single specimen had 

 eighty-three descendants. Singular and distorted forms appear from 

 the successive and irregular evolution of the buds, during subsistence 

 of the connecting ligament." Edin. New Phil. Journ. xvii. 411 ; 

 xxi. 92. and Rep. Brit. Assoc, an. 1834, p. 599. 



3. Hermia,* Johnston. 

 Character. — Polype fixed., slieatUeJ. in a thin horny mem- 

 brane, clavate or branched and suhpliytoidal, the apices of the 

 branches clubbed and furnished laith scattered glandular tentacu- 

 la : mouth 0. 



1. H. Glandulosa, irregularly or dichotomously branched ; 



* I found the name in Shakspeare ; 



" What wicked and dissembling glasse of mine, 



" Made me compare with Hermia's sphery eyne." 

 When I defined this genus in the Mag. Zool. and Bot. V. ii. p. 326, I was not 

 aware that the same had been instituted by Sars under the name of Stipula, and 

 by Ehrenberg who called it Syncoryne. The latter designation is in direct oppo- 

 sition to the Linntean axiom — " generic names, derived from others by the ad- 

 dition of a syllable, are disapproved ;" — and Sars' name seems to me even more 

 inadmissible, since it is a descriptive term in Botany. The fancy that the glands 

 which surround the heads were the guardians of the animal, — its " sphery eyne" 

 — suggested the name here adopted. 



