TRACHYMEDUSiE — AGLAURA, AGLANTHA. 



401 



curving lips. The 8 spherical or ovoid gonads are situated upon the peduncle a short distance 

 above the stomach. Each gonad arises from the side of a radial tube, the entodermal lumen 

 of the gonad being in direct communication with that of the adjacent radial tube. 



Stomach reddish-purple, gonads and lips white. The distal halves of the tentacles are 

 orange and their ends are red. 



Distinguished from the typical Aglaura hematoma by the following characters: The 

 peduncle is about 1.5 times as long as in A. hemistoma; the gonads are spherical or ovoid in 



FlG. 253-— Aglaura "lalerna," after Haeckel, in Syst. iter Meduscn. 



shape, not sausage-shaped as in A. hemistoma, and, finally, the tentacles are only about half 

 as numerous as in A. hemistoma. It certainly intergrades with the typical A. hemistoma 

 and should be no longer considered as distinctive. 



Haeckel found this "variety" in the Canary Islands, in January, 1867, and the Plankton 

 Expedition of 1889 captured it in the Sargasso Sea. 



Aglaura hemistoma var. "octagona." 

 Aglaura octagona, Bigf.low, H. B., 1904, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. at Harvard College, vol. 39, p. 257, plate 2, fig. 9. 



Bell octagonal, with slightly bulging sides and truncated, prismatic top, 1.5 mm. wide, 

 3 mm. high; walls exceedingly thin, but very rigid. About 32 tentacles, 8 interradial sensory- 

 clubs. Velum is provided with a series of circular muscles. Peduncle narrow, trumpet- 

 shaped, fully 1.5 times as long as bell-radius. 8 egg-shaped gonads are borne at points ot 

 junction of the 8 slender radial-canals with stomach. Stomach about one-fourth as long as 

 peduncle, 4 simple, recurved lips. Colorless. Found off Kolumadulu Atoll, Maldive Islands, 

 Indian Ocean, from a depth of 100 fathoms to surface, on December 30, 1901. 



This "variety" may be identical with Aglaura laterna Haeckel, of the Canary Islands. 



Genus AGLANTHA Haeckel, 1879. 



Circe, Brandt (Mertens), 1834, Recueil Actes Acad. Sci. St. Petersburg, p. 201.— Forbes, 1848, British Naked-eyed Medusa-, 

 p. 34.— Lesson, 1843, Zooph. Acal., p. 285— Aoassiz, L., 1862, Cont. Nat. Hist. U. S., vol. 4, p. 349- 



Trachyntma, Agassiz, A., 1865, North Amer. Acal., p. 55. 



Aglantha+ Agliscra, Haeckel, 1879, Svst. der Medusen, pp. 271, 276. 



Aglantha, Maas, 1893, Ergeb. der Plankton Expedition, Bd. 2, K. c, p. 23; 1906, Fauna Arctica, Bd. 4, Lfg. 3, p. 494.— Bige- 

 low, H. B., 1909, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool. at Harvard College, vol. 37, p. 121. 



The name "Circe" was preoccupied in 1817 by Schumacher who applied it to Mollusca. 

 "Trachynema" of Gegenbaur, 1854, was applied to Trachynema ciliatum, a larval medusa 

 of the Mediterranean, that is certainly generically distinct from " Trachynema " of A. Agassiz, 

 1865. In 1879, Haeckel proposed the name Aglantha which is thus the first distinctive term 

 applied to the genus. 



