OBSERVATIONS ON SOME AUSTRALIAN 

 POLYCBJETA. 



By William A. Haswell, M.A., B.Sc, 



Lecturer on Zoology and Comparative Anatomy, Sydney 

 University. 



Part I. 



[With Plates L.— LV.] 



L SYLLID^. 



Kinberg (1) has described two species of this family {Tho'e 

 fusi/orniis and Eurymedv^a picta) obtained in Port Jackson 

 during the voyage of the " Eugenie." These are, as far as I am 

 aware, the only species of Syllidoi that have been described from 

 the Australian coast. I have not been able to obtain access to the 

 more detailed descriptions of these Annelids given in the " Annu- 

 lata " of the " Eugenics Resa," (the two copies of that work 

 which I have had the opportunity of examining being both 

 incomplete), but by a careful analysis of the short definitions in 

 the preliminary paj^er above referred to I have convinced myself 

 that the species in question are both distinct from any of the six 

 described in the present memoir. 



Of these six species one (Sijllis corruscans), is very remarkable 

 in several respects, and most especially in the presence in the 

 section of its alimentary canal which I here call the gizzard, of 

 striated muscular tissue of a very marked type — a tissue which 

 has never before been described as occurring in the Annelida. 



(1) " Annulatanova." Ofvers. of K. Vet-Akad. Fcirh, 1864. 



