62 BOUGAINVILLEA BRITANNICA. 
1. Bougainvillea Britannica, Forbes (1841). 
Synonyms. Hippocrene Britannica. E. Forbes, in Annals of Nat. Hist., vol. vii, 
p- 84, pl. 1, fig. 2 (1841). 
Bougainvillea Britannica. Lesson, Acalephes, p. 291 (1843). 
Medusa duodecilia. Dalyell, Animals of Scotland, p. 70, pl. 11, 
figs. 11, 12) (1847). 
This beautiful little animated bubble is nearly globular, and usually not much larger than 
a marrowfat pea. Its umbrella is transparent, colourless, and quite smooth, therein differing 
essentially from the Hippocrene Bougainvillii of Brandt, which has pilose sides resembling, 
in this respect, Zhaumantias pilosella. (See Brandt, in Petersburg Memoirs, Sixth Ser., Sc. 
Nat., vol. ii, pl. 20, figs. 2, 3, 4, and 6.) The opening of the umbrella is contracted and 
quadrangular. At each angle is an oblong group of tentacle-bulbs, closely packed together, 
six to eight in each group. Each bulb is particoloured, orange below, and white above, with 
a red eye-dot on the white portion. The bulbs seem all united into one mass or pad at their 
lower part, so that the tentacles are more close together at their origins than the ocelli. The 
tentacles are as many as the bulbs, not very long, yet slender, white towards their bases, 
orange towards their tips. The outer ones are usually borne curled upwards. The sub- 
umbrella is small as compared with the umbrella, less than half its size. It is divided ito 
four sections by four simple gastric vessels, which join the marginal vessel opposite the groups 
of tentacular bulbs. From its centre hangs the massy peduncle, consisting in its upper part 
of four equal, compressed, quadrate lobes, of a bright orange colour, contracting below into a 
short, tubular, orange stomach. The latter terminates in a mouth surrounded by four very 
curious lips, for each is prolonged into a white filiform tentacle, which twice dichotomously 
divides ; each division terminates in a bulbiform extremity of an orange colour, with dark 
specks. The structure of these singular appendages to the mouth reminds us of the root- 
like cotyledonary tentacles of Cephea among the higher Medus@, and serves to bear out 
the view that those bodies are not substitutes for stomachs, absorbent roots, as it were, as 
formerly supposed, but only a modified form of fimbriated lips. The gland-like appearance 
of their extremities in Bougainvillea, seems to depend on terminal accumulations of fibrous and 
pigment: cells. 
The Bougainvillea Britannica is a very active little animal, and very tenacious of life. 
Its tentacula are continually in motion, and sometimes so contracted, that none appears to be 
present. It is abundant, but probably not gregarious, in various localities in the north. I 
have taken it in the Kyles of Bute, whence it was first described, at the entrance of the Frith 
of Forth, in Zetland, and in Ballycastle Bay, on the north coast of Ireland. It has also been 
taken on the east coast of Scotland by Mr. Henry Goodsir, and Mr. Patterson has.communicated 
a memorandum of a little Medusa, evidently this species, procured by him at Portaferry, 
Strangford Loch, on the 7th of August, 1838, so that he had met with and observed it before 
Thad the same good fortune. 
Plate XII, fig. 1, a, represents this Bougainvillea of the natural size; 1, 6, magnified, 
and seen in profile; 1, ¢, as seen from above; 1, d, the lobes of the peduncle. Between 
