1905.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 525 



NEW SPECIES OF POLYCHJITA FROM THE NORTH PACIFIC, CHIEFLY 

 FROM ALASKAN WATERS. 



BY J. PERCY MOORE. 



In connection with the investigations of a special Alaskan Salmon 

 Commission the U. S. Fish Commission steamer Albatross established, 

 during the summer of 1903, a series of more than 100 dredging and 

 trawling stations, extending from the vicinity of Vancouver Island along 

 the coast of British America and into Alaskan waters as far north and 

 west as Shelikof Strait. The zo5logical collections were in charge of 

 Prof. Harold Heath of Leland Stanford Junior University, to whom 

 and to Dr. B. W. Evermann, I owe the opportunity of studying the 

 annelids. 



Some of the more interesting novelties in the families already fully 

 studied are described in this paper; those of the remaining families 

 will be noticed in later papers, while a full report upon the collection, 

 with a complete list of all stations at which each species was taken, will 

 appear in the publications of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries. 



Not the least interesting result of these investigations is the discovery 

 of a probable error of locality in my paper on Greenland Polychseta. 

 In that paper are described four new species of Polynoidse, viz., Gatty- 

 ana senta, Gatiyana ciliata, Lagisca multisetosa and Eunoe truncata. 

 Some siu-prise was expressed at the occurrence of these new species at 

 a single locality in McCormick Bay, while other bottles of specimens 

 from the same bay yielded none of these, but only well-known Arctic 

 species. There was then, however, no reason for questioning the 

 authenticity of the label. The discovery that all of these are common 

 species throughout most of the region covered by these investigations 

 makes their occurrence in Greenland under the circumstances described 

 exceedingly doubtful. Moreover, the collections of this Academy in- 

 clude several bottles of Polychseta taken by Dr. Benjamin Sharp at 

 Icy Cape, Alaska. On seeing the Polynoidse in question Dr. Sharp 

 states his belief that they were collected by him. It seems almost cer- 

 tain, therefore, that the McCormick Bay label was misplaced in this 

 bottle, and that the specimens really came from Alaska. Unless con- 

 firmed by subsequent discoveries the Greenland record should be 

 ignored as valueless. 



