NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 288 



ribs and tlie wide, deep calice, with a large hispid and spongy 

 columella and a broad attachment. 



Amongst the new species the author has been able to add one to 

 each of the remarkable and rare genera Endopachys [Australic^), and 

 Heteropsammia {^ellipticd). The author also in other papers describes 

 a new species oi Psammoseris — P. cylicioides* — and of Desmophyllum — 

 D. quinarium, f — the former with a plate of eight figures. 



New Genus of Milleporidse. — In the same publication theEev. J. E. 

 Tenison- Woods describes | a new genus of Milleporid^, Arachnopora, 

 the generic character being " zoothome parasitic spreading like a small 

 thin web over other corals." In the only species found {A. argentea) 

 the substance of the zoothome (7 by 3 mm.) seems a quite transparent 

 membrane, on which there is generally a very close arrangement of 

 small silvery granules. It occurs parasitic on corals, filling up half of 

 the calice and spreading from opposite septa like a spider's web. 

 It also spreads over tlie sides of the costse, where it appears just like 

 a snail's track, on which some very fine white dust had been sparsely 

 scattered. There are no calices on the outside. 



New Genus of Starfishes. — Dr. J. Jullieu describes § a new 

 genus Marthasterias allied to Asterias, and characterized by its four 

 rows of ambulacral tubes, the reticulated character of the dorsal 

 skeleton, five arms, the presence of spines in the membrane edging the 

 marginal plates, and its pedunculated pedicellariae : to the new species 

 the name foliacea is given. 



Some idea of its characters will be gathered from the fact that 

 " an eminent zoologist " regarded it as an Asterias glacialis which 

 had undergone violent compression ; this theory is, however, nega- 

 tived by the presence on the dorsal surface of fragments of Betepora 

 cellulosa, which would not have been preserved had the animal 

 undergone the accident suggested. The rows of ambulacral spines 

 are moreover single, and not double as in AMerias ; while the spines 

 themselves are simply conical, and are without the median constric- 

 tion observed in that common form. The habitat of the single specimen 

 described is not quite certainly known, but it is stated to be the 

 Adriatic ; the presence of a young Nassa reticulata in its intestines, 

 together with that of the above-mentioned bryozoan on its surface, 

 seems to indicate sufficiently clearly that it is an inhabitant of some 

 European sea. 



Helminthology. — Linstow continues, in the 'Archiv fiir Natur- 

 geschichte,' || his observations on Helminthology ; the paper is purely 

 technical, but it may be of interest to observe that this indefatigable 

 observer here describes forty-two forms, of which twenty-four are 

 new species. The last described is the curious Sphcerularia bombi, 

 Dufour, and the author states that he has found in the roots of moss a 

 Nematode form, which is very like it, though somewhat larger, and 



♦ ' Proc. Linnean Soc. N. S. Wales,' iii. (1878) 8. 

 t Ibid., 17. X Ibid., 6. 



§ ' Bull. Soc. Zool. de France,' iii. (1878) HI. 

 II xliv. (1878) 218. 



