Manchester Memoirs, Vol. liii. (1908), No. 4. 3 



ventral arms were coiled together and pressed firmly 

 against the posterior end of the body, the dorsal pair 

 being held loosely back over the head. As the lateral 

 arms were withdrawn from the mantle-cavity, they and 

 the other two pairs of arms exhibited a most extraordinary 

 activity in the form of an extremely rapid spiral twirling. 



It is possible that these movements, and the inter- 

 mittent placing of the small suckers near the mouth in 

 position for the reception of the eggs, may have been due 

 to some difficulty in oviposition having arisen as the 

 result of captivity ; for very few specimens seem able to 

 produce their eggs at all in captivity, a large number of 

 females dying in an egg-bound condition. 



Joubin {loc. cit., p. 159) states that these movements 

 were followed, in the cases he watched, by the almost 

 immediate production of the eggs. In this instance, how- 

 ever, it was not so, and eventually, after altogether about 

 one and a half hours apparently futile waiting, I left the 

 aquarium to return to my work in the laboratory, return- 

 ing occasionally to see whether there were any further 

 signs of impending spawning. 



After about half an hour I had the good fortune to 

 find the specimen under observation crawling sideways 

 across the glass front of its tank, and to see it come to 

 rest adhering to the glass by its large suckers, whilst the 

 mouth was withdrawn from the glass to the narrow 

 extremity of a funnel-shaped depression thus formed 

 between the bases of the arms ; across the broad opening 

 of this depression the small proximal suckers would 

 stretch out to clasp one another and then restlessly draw 

 back again. 



Four or five jets of water were directed through the 

 siphon into this oral funnel, no doubt to insure its absolute 

 freedom from all obnoxious materials, and the proximal 



