i 5 o DISCOVERY REPORTS 



carina, nevertheless she regards Haeckel's carina, if I understand her correctly, as trigona, yet she uses 

 Haeckel's figure of his type carina as one of her criteria for distinguishing the posterior nectophore of 

 carina. As other criteria for separating the posterior nectophores of the species, Dr Sears refers to 

 (i) the ventral teeth, elongate, heavily serrated, straight and sharp in trigona but 'stubby' in carina; 

 (2) comb with 6-8 teeth in trigona, 9-10 teeth in carina; (3) margin of ventral wing with heavy and 

 prominent teeth in trigona, but not so robust and jagged in carina, and scarcely more than strong 

 serrations ; (4) width of the nectophore half its length in trigona but nothing in its general shape to 



New records of Abyla schmidti 



distinguish that of carina; (5) an overgrowth of the outer ventro-basal margin of the larger of the 

 ventral wings in carina. In her own words ' the inner row of nine or ten small spines is parallel to the 

 basal margin close to the two ventral teeth but ventrad it gradually swerves inwards a short distance 

 from the margin crossing the inner surface to merge with the outer row at the ventral margin, much 

 as is shown in one of Haeckel's drawings (1888&, pi. 35, fig. 1)'. 



We know nothing of Haeckel's actual type specimens, though the ' Challenger ' ones still exist at 

 the Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.). Therefore we have to depend entirely for data on the ' Challenger' figures 

 and description of the Lanzerote type specimens. I am not satisfied as yet that A. carina Haeckel is 

 not a synonym of A. trigona Quoy and Gaimard. Chun (1888 a) said that A. trigona occurred in great 

 swarms in the Canaries at the end of February and in March. Even the eight anterior nectophores 

 of Haeckel's type material show variation in the shape of the dorsal tooth and in other respects. In the 

 adults of both species the general shape of the nectophores is the same, there are nine or ten teeth on 



