10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL, MUSEUM vol.88 



CAPSALA LAEVIS (Verrill) 



Plate 15, Figures 184-188 



Tristoma laeve Verbill, Amer. Journ. Sci. and Arts, ser, 3, vol. 10, p. 40, 1875. 



While a lot of alcoholic material from the gills of swordfish 

 {Xiphias gladlus) were being examined, a single specimen (U.S.N.M. 

 No. 8154) of the genus Capsala was found. The date of collecting is 

 not certain. It was probably in the lot collected on July 13, 1911, 

 when about 75 tristomes were taken from the gills of a swordfish. 



Measurements in balsam: Length, 11.25 mm.; breadth, 8.5 mm.; 

 anterior suckers, length 2.1 mm., breadth 1.65 mm. ; posterior sucker, 

 length 3.78 mm., breadth 3.42 mm. ; hooks on posterior sucker, length 

 0.45 mm., breadth 0.17 mm.; pharynx, length 1.4 nun., breadth 

 1.45 mm. 



There are two stout, blunt hooks on the posterior sucker. The 

 length given above is a little less than the actual length, since the 

 hooks were slightly inclined to the plane of the slide, and conse- 

 quently foreshortened in the camera lucida sketch. The pharynx is 

 divided into an anterior and a posterior portion by a constriction 

 a little back of the middle. Length of anterior portion, 0.84 mm.; 

 breadth, 1.45 mm.; length of posterior portion, 0.56 mm.; breadth 

 0.91 mm. 



The posterior sucker has five rays on its anterior half. The in- 

 testines are profoundly branched, the ultimate branches reaching 

 nearly to the margins of the body and extending into the anterior 

 suckers and into the anterior lobe between the suckers, in all of 

 which branches of the intestines reach nearly to the margin. The 

 cirrus pouch, enclosing the seminal vesicle at its base, reaches quite 

 to the median line immediately behind the pharynx. The two testes 

 lie side by side a short distance back of the cirrus pouch to the left 

 of the median line. They are somewhat obscured by the branches of 

 the intestine. The vas deferens makes a loop from the testes to a 

 point a short distance to the right of the median line, returning in 

 front of the testes, whence it becomes crumpled into short folds, then 

 proceeds to the cirrus pouch, which it enters at about the middle 

 of the length. The ovary is a rosettelike cluster of 12 or more 

 lobed bodies on the median line, its left anterior border being con- 

 tiguous with the right testis. The vitellaria have about the same 

 distribution as the intestines, extending nearly to the margins, in- 

 cluding the anterior suckers and the anterior lobe between the suckers. 

 Two nerve trunks on each side lateral to the main intestinal rami, 

 and connected at the level of the cirrus pouch by broad commissures, 

 are clearly shown. 



