MR. GOSSE ON PEACHIA HASTATA. : 269 
| as to conceal and envelope the body. As this protrusion proceeded, I found that these 
bands were not the ovaries, as I at first supposed, but were attached to them. The ovaries 
were protruded also in the form of thick tubes, much convoluted, and of a salmon-colour, 
studded with minute white specks. These tubes were filled to distension with their 
contents, and were consequently plump, at least at one edge; for, as well as I could 
judge, they ran off at the opposite edge into a broad, exceedingly attenuated, gelatinous 
ribbon. Along the thickened and tubular edge was attached the capsuliferous band, as a 
mesentery; this also having a thickened margin, but differing in structure, as well as in 
appearance from the former. It was narrower and much more eonvolved ; the edge lying 
in pretty regular figure-of-8 turns, or scrolls, like the frill of a cap; the colour of this 
band was dull yellowish, with the thiekened border white. This border was, as I have 
said above, principally composed of thread-capsules; but in the salmon-red tubes I found 
none of these organs. "They were filled with ova, enveloped in a red mucus, which gave 
the colour not only to the tubes themselves, but also to the body of the animal. These ` 
ova were globose or pear-shaped bodies, very soft and elastic, the largest measuring „th 
of an inch in length, by -45th in diameter; while others (of the globose form) probably 
less advanced, were not more than z}sth of an inch in diameter. Indeed they rather re- 
sembled the planules of a Plumularia or Antennularia than proper ova, except that they 
had no motion, and were not ciliated. They consisted of a granular brown substance, 
becoming clear and colourless at the circumference. T could see no trace of a nucleus in 
any, either with or without pressure. | 
The animals, so burst and apparently dead, I allowed to remain in a dish of pure sea- 
water, with a growing leaf of Ulva, to preserve its vitality. To my surprise, they at 
length were evidently everted, turned (by the continuance of the process of protrusion 
through the ruptured integument) completely inside out, so that the membranous septa 
of the interior now projected from the cireumference; while from each interseptal space 
protruded the convoluted ovaries, with. their mesenteries and frilled bands. Nor did it 
appear that death had really ensued. As an animal, an individual, I could not consider 
it otherwise than deceased ; for it was become a shapeless mass of viscera, from which the 
original integuments were sloughing, in films of glairy membrane. But no putrescence 
had set in; and on examination with a lens, through the sides of a glass vase, to which I 
had early removed the specimens, I found in each one, twelve days after they had been in 
this dissolved state, that the ovaries maintained a perfectly clear, plump, -a 
appearance (fig. 6), with a more vivid rose-tint than at first ; and that PGPT pu : 
were slowly, but constantly, moving all over them ; puckering and olding vu 
involutions, and altering their forms, by means of the eilia with which sk were 2 : 
— a beautiful provision for the respiration, so to speak, of the yet undeve oped embryos, 
by the perpetual passage of currents of the surrounding water along the ovaries. 
I was thus forcibly remin ed of the mode in which the oviposition is effected in that 
little lovely Medusa, Turris neglecta,—by the protrusion of the scr er the RRR 
and gradual dissolution of the umbrella, as I have elsewhere er rip nr i 
process, which I have now reason to believe is common to the hig er ‚at i 
* Devonshire Coast, p. 352. 
: 2N2 
