Further Notes on Austral ian Hyd raids. 97 



I refrain from naming this species at present, as in the absence 

 of the hydranths it is impossible to decide whether it forms the 

 type of a new genus, or whether it may be possible to refer it to 

 one already established. 



Campanularia. 



The only species of this genus which I have to describe, thougli 

 small and of simple habit, agrees in all its more important 

 characteristics with the two or three species for which Professor 

 Allman has proposed the genus Thyroscyphus. It is true that a 

 four-sided operculum is given as a feature of that genus, while 

 in C. tridentata the operculum is three-sided ; but the precise 

 number of opercular valves is obviously not of generic importance ; 

 in another direction, however, the genus is unsatisfactory, namely 

 in separating species which are exceedingly close allies, differing 

 in no important particular except in the presence or absence of 

 the operculum. For example, the Cainpanidaria insignis of the 

 Challenger Report and the Cainpa7iularia Torresii of Busk 

 {Thyroscyphus simplex., Allman) and T. ramosiis, Allman, are all 

 so closely related that no arrangement which separates them can 

 be regarded as satisfactory. The species mentioned, with some 

 others, though having shortly pedunculate hydrothecae, are, in 

 regard to the arrangement of the latter and the ramification, 

 more like the genus Sertularella than the typical members of the 

 Campanularian family ; and as in Sertularella., the hydrothec;e 

 may have three or four emarginations of the border, with an 

 operculum of the same number of valves, or may be entire and 

 destitute of any operculum. It cannot be maintained that the 

 presence or absence of the operculum in the one group is in the 

 slightest degree more important than in the other, and as Pro- 

 fessor Allman is doubtless justified in remarking concerning 

 •species of Sertularia provided with membranous opercular valves 

 that " few systematists would thmk of separating these generically 

 from the closely allied species in which no valves are present," it 

 seems to follow that such separation is equally unwarranted in 

 the Campanularian group. Undoubtedly such species as C. 

 insignis and C. Torresii form a group distinct from the typical 

 Cainpanulari(Z, and it would perhaps be advisable to unite them 

 in a single genus, which, rankmg under the CAMPANULARiiDiE, 



H 



