ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICROSCOPY, KTC. 83 



in Uhrysaora, they are hermaphrodite, or male when young and female 

 when old. When mature at the breedino; season the males and females 

 usually come to the surface in great numbers, and may form vast swarms 

 many square miles in extent. The pear-?haped cihated planulse settle 

 <lown witb the antei'ior end downwards, and the mouth and tentacles 

 appear at what was the posterior end. 



The Scyphomedusse include five main orders :— Carybdeidte or Cubo- 

 medusiB, Stauromedusas, Coronatie, Semseostomata (sucli as Aurelia 

 aurita, which occurs from pole to pole), and the Rhizostomeaj. As 

 examples of convergence attention is directed to the Holothurian Pelago- 

 thuria, which liears a wonderfully close resemblance to a jelly-fish, and 

 swims actively through the water in the tropical Pacific, and to Grasimdo- 

 tdla, a Protozoon, " which would certainly have been mistaken for a 

 jelly-fish had it not been of microscopic size." 



Notes on Philippine Stolonifera and Xeniidae.* — 8. F. Jiight 

 describes the flower-like beauty of the large distinct polyps of the 

 Philippine species of Antkelia and Xenia. " With their beautiful 

 iridescent shades of blue and green and rich velvety brown, their grace- 

 fully flexible polyps waving with the currents, and their slender feather- 

 like tentacles, they present a picture of unusual grace and charm. The 

 smaller, shorter, and more rigid star-like distal moieties of Tubipora, or 

 of Glavularia violacea Quoy and Gaimard with their solid green, blue, 

 or light velvety brown colours, present a decidedly different appearance, 

 but one as distinctly pleasing ; and the sudden change which takes 

 place when the colony, disturbed by some sudden jar or by a shadow, 

 suddenly retracts the distal moieties of its polyps, exposing the red 

 expanse of the rest of the colony, is very startling." 



The Philippine forms belong to the genera Cornularia, Anthelia, 

 OJavvlaria, and Sympodivm. Attention is directed to the large gland 

 cells which occur in the columucir epithelium of the stomodaeum in 

 Glavularia viridis and other forms. Scattered at more or less regular 

 intervals in the inner portion of the stomodgeal wall are numerous short 

 cells, each containing an oval nematocyst about O'OOl) mm. in length 

 with a spirally coiled thread. Perhaps this is the first case in which 

 nematocysts have been found in the stomodgeal wall of an Alcyonarian. 



Hickson spoke of horny skeletal elements being present in wide 

 lacunas in the mesogloea of G. viridis. Light regards these as the nuclei 

 of spicule-forming cells. The true skeletal fibres are in the ectoderm. 

 In G. violacea Quoy and Gaimard there is no trace of pinnules, and the 

 author calls attention to many other peculiarities, such as the presence 

 in the distal moiety of an ectoderm of very high columnar epithelium 

 which is strikingly different from that of any other known Alcyonarian, 

 the enormous development of the muscular ridges of the mesenteries, 

 and the peculiar structure of the swollen upper portion of the mesen- 

 teries in which the mesoglcBa is finely reticulated, and contains numerous 

 symmetrically placed, deeply staining, irregularly shaped bodies. 



* Philippine Journ. Sci., x. (1915) pp. 155-67. 



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