REPORT UPON THE ANNELIDA POLYCHiETA OF BEAUFORT, 



NORTH CAROLINA. 



BY 



E. A. Andrews, Ph.D. 

 (With Plates xii-xviii.) 



The Annelid fauna of the northeastern coast of the United States has 

 become so well known tiironj^h the hibors of A. E. Verrill, II. E. Web- 

 ster, and others, that our ignorance of that of the sontliern Atlantic 

 States is the more striking by contrast. South of Northampton County, 

 Virginia, where Webster, in 1874 and 1870, obtained some fifty-nine 

 species of Polyclueta, described in his Annelida Chaitapoda of the 

 Virginian coast, but very little has been published respecting the lit- 

 toral Annelid fauna, though the European descriptions of forms col- 

 lected in the West Indies, the collection of Professor Goode in Bei muda 

 of twenty-six species, described in the Bulletin of the U. S. National 

 Museum, 188-1, and the extensive monograph of Elders on the Annelids 

 dredged by the Coast Survey steamer Blake off the Florida coast (Mem. 

 Mus. Com. Zool., Harvard, 1887) gi%'e a few general grounds for antici- 

 pating some of the discoveries to be expected along the shores of the 

 Southern States. 



In this region, Charleston lIarl)or was carefully examined by the 

 French naturalist, L. A. G. Bosc, toward the close of the last century, 

 with the result that several interesting Annelids were made known, 

 among them being the new genus Polydora. Later Stimpson (Proc. 

 Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., 1850) described two new Annelids from this 

 same interesting locality, one being the remarkal)ly large Acoetes 

 hqnna. Farther north, at Fort Macon, near Beaufort, North Carolina, 

 Cones and Yarrow collected marine Annelids, nine species of which 

 were described by Verrill in 1878 (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila.). 



In the following list some fifty-seven species, representing twenty- 

 four families of Polychii^tous Annelids, are identified and described, with 

 such notes upon breeding, habits, color, etc., as were made at that time, 

 the collection being obtained in connection with the Johns Hopkins 

 Marine Laboratory, Beaufort, North Carolina, in the summer months of 

 1884 and 1885. As the collection was confined to a short part of the 

 year, was for the most part limited to the area between tides, and not 

 conducted with any great thoroughness, the list must obviously give but 



Proceedings National Museum, Vol. XIV— Xo. 852. 



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