1916. | N. ANNANDALE: Campanulina ceylonensis. 51 
The only species of Phortis, that has been traced to its hy- 
droid, if we except ‘‘ Ivene cevlonensis,” is P. gibbusa (McCrady), the 
life-cvcle of which was worked out by Brooks! in North America. 
His description, which is brief and unaccompanied by figures, 
does not conform to Campanulina in that it makes no mention of 
an operculum to the hydrotheca or of a webbing of the tentacles, 
but both these points are difficult to detect unless attention is 
specially directed to them and the general conformation of the 
colony is not unlike that of the species found in the Gangetic 
delta. 
Some of the medusae from Calcutta lived in captivity for a 
week, though all of them had apparently shed their gonads at 
least three days earlier. Those that remained alive at the end 
of the week were, as was shown by the asymmetrical form of 
their bells and their feeble and irregular pulsations, in a degene- 
rate condition. They had, moreover, assumed completely the 
peculiarities regarded by Browne (op. cit., p. 141, pl. iii, figs. 12- 
16) as diagnostic of his /rene palkensis. When the gonads first 
reach or approach maturity the tentacles alternate with sense- 
organs round the margin of the bell; the former are capable of 
great elongation and all are complete in structure; the otocysts 
are small and each contains a single otolith or sometimes a pair of 
otoliths. The shedding of the sexual products apparently takes 
some days. When it commences the gonads do not extend down 
the manubrial peduncle, but as it proceeds and approaches com- 
pletion they do so to some extent. Meanwhile considerable 
changes take place on the margin of the bell. Numerous addi- 
tional tentacles begin to bud out, but as a rule only the basal 
bulb is completed and the filamentous part is altogether abortive. 
At the same time the otocysts increase greatly in size, becoming 
three or four times as large as hitherto; the otoliths multiply, so 
that there may be as many as eight in a single sense-organ, and 
finally the whole structure divides into two otocysts. Details as 
to the process of division have not yet been worked out either in 
the cysts or in their contained concretions. 
These changes in the tentacles and sense-organs prove that 
Browne’s two species, Ivene ceylonensis and Irene palkensis, are 
identical or rather that the latter represents merely a degenerat- 
ing phase of the former. 
Before the sexual products are completely shed the upper 
part of the bell often becomes constricted, the constriction involv- 
ing not only the jelly but also the upper part of the subumbrellar 
cavity. The tentacles then degenerate, and finally both they and 
the sense-organs disappear. The bell shrinks to a half or a third, 
and finally to about a sixth of its original size and at last ceases 
to pulsate. The manubrium, however, though also shrunken, still 
exhibits languid movements, which persist for some days after 
the complete disappearance of the marginal structures and even 

! Stud. Biol. Lab. Fohn Hopkins Univ., Il, p. 470 (1883). 
