800 . PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [DeC, 



the muscular pharynx reaches nearly or quite to the first parapodium 

 and, except in two or three, the proboscis is everted and has the shape 

 of an elliptical dish. Ovaries are present in both rami of developed 

 parapodia, arising from near the apex of the outer wall, and are actively 

 proliferating spherical groups of ova and nurse-cells, many of which 

 float freely in the coelom. There is little indication of the predomi- 

 nance of one cell in each of these groups, so that none of the specimens 

 shows evidence of approaching maturity. 



From the foregoing it is evident that the specific identity of our 

 species with that so well known from northern European waters under 

 the name of T. onisciformis Eschscholtz is by no means certain. 

 Greeff's name is employed in the belief that future more thorough 

 knowledge of the species of this genus will probably justify it, though 

 the grounds^ upon which he splits Eschscholtz's species into two and 

 altogether abandons the latter's much earlier name^° are quite insuffi- 

 cient. Southern New England is within the already known geographi- 

 cal range of T. hdgolandica. In the western Atlantic Apstein found it 

 abundantly in the plankton taken off Newfoundland, and records it 

 from as far south as the mouth of the Amazon river. T. smithii \er- 

 rill" from Eastport, Maine, is probal^ly founded on adult examples of 

 this species, and if the black spots shown at the bases of the parapodia of 

 the West Indian Tomopteris figured by Agassiz^^ represent the ncphri- 

 dial pores, there is no apparent reason for considering that to be any 

 other species. By far the most generally distributed species in the 

 warmer parts of the western Atlantic, according to the records of the 

 German Plankton Expedition, is T. keferstinii, but no American plank- 

 tologist has recorded this from the surface fauna of the Gulf Stream. 

 Andrews^^ states that immature individuals of a Tomopteris reseml jling 

 T. rolasi occur at Beaufort, North Carolina, but no description of them 

 has been published. 



» Zeit. /. wiss. Zoo]., XXXII, p. 264. 

 '"/sis, 1825, column 736, PI. 5, fig. 5. 

 " Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., II (1879), p. 182. 

 ^^ Tliree Voyages of tfie Blatxc, Vol. I, p. 192. 

 '•' Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., XIV (1891), p. 300. 



