ACALEPELE. 



173 



the walls of the stomach present four folds, which are lined by brown 

 cells, like those in the Hydra, and probably fulfilling an hepatic func- 

 tion. The ciliated epithelium is best developed at the bottom of the 

 stomach. This part of the digestive sac communicates with a cili- 

 ated chylaqueous (nutritive and respiratory) cavity, comparable to that 

 in Actinia (^jig. 63. g, g' ), by two small apertures, each guarded by 

 a sphincter. The chylaqueous cavity surrounds the stomach, beyond 

 which its narrower end extends vertically as a cloacal canal to the 

 pole opposite the mouth, where it terminates by two small excretory 

 outlets. Between and below the sheaths of the tentacles {g, g,Jig. 78.) 

 the chylaqueous cavity sends out transversely two w^ide canals in 



opposite directions, which bifurcate at 

 acute angles, each branch again bifur- 

 cating at similar angles (somewhat as 

 shown in the transverse section of the 

 Ci/dippe,Jig. 78., but varying according 

 to the point of view), thus sending off 

 eight radiating horizontal canals, which 

 send off as many vertical canals along 

 the whole extent of the eight rows of 

 vibratile fringes ; branches are also 

 sent to supply the tentacular sheaths, 

 and two tubes extend vertically along the flat surface of the stomach 

 to the margin of the mouth. At the oral end of the spheroid the 

 longitudinal canals communicate with a circular one, and a similar 

 circular vessel surrounds the anal disc, in Bero'e Forskalii* 



Willf has given a good description and figure of the infundibular 

 chylaqueous cavity, and the canals sent off to the stomach, to the 

 long and short rows of cilia, to the tentacles and the body-lobes, in 

 the Eucharis multicornis, a lobed Beroe, belonging to the same family 

 as the Lesueuria of Edwards and the Bolina of Agassiz, who confirms, 

 in the main, this account, in his elaborate description of the chyla- 

 queous system of a North American Beroe {Pleurobrachia rhodo- 

 dactyla, Ag4). In this species M. Agassiz observed that, besides 

 the movement of the chylaqueous fluid due to the ciliated epithelium 

 lining the system containing it, the parietes of the central cavity of 

 the main trunks, as well as those of the vessels to the ciliated bands, 

 contracted and dilated ; and that the dilatation of the vessels of one 

 side of the body alternated with the dilatation of those of the other 



Cydippe. 



* See tlie beautiful figure of the system of ciliated chylaqueous canals, injected 

 in CXLVI. pi. 6. fig. 1., a. ^^<^'n 



t CXIV. p. 31. tab. i. fig. iii. ^rri i . 



X CXLVIII. pp. 332—339. pi. iii. and iv. 



