BALANOGLOSSUS OTAGOENSIS. 499 



the tip of it to the surface of the weed or bottle, and drew its 

 body after it, with a good deal of wriggling ; probably this act 

 of fixation was effected by the abundant sticky secretion which 

 is discharged by the epidermis. 



The collar is moderately long and is triangulate, being marked 

 by two transverse furrows, of which the second is the deeper. 



The branchial region is relatively short : I counted twelve 

 double gill-slits on each side of the pharynx, i. e. there are 

 twelve pairs of branchial apertures opening into the branchial 

 grooves (fig. 1). I was unable to see these apertures in life, but 

 I counted the gills when the animal had been stained and 

 cleared (fig. 2) ; the gill-bars are without sjnapticula (fig. 3). 

 I further confirmed this observation by counting the gill-pores 

 in this series of sections. 



The post-branchial region is not "winged;" the dorsal 

 surface is slightly depressed along the branchial and post- 

 branchial regions, and the gonads lie, as usual, in the lateral 

 ridges. Of these there are about sixteen on each side, in this 

 case ovaries. 



There are no hepatic diverticula ; the post-genital region of 

 the body is cylindrical, and exhibits a narrow, but deep, 

 ventral furrow for some distance (fig. 11). 



In the genital region the intestine is narrow and its wall is 

 a good deal folded, but posteriorly it widens out and comes to 

 fill the body-cavity (fig. 12). 



The internal anatomy, as derived from study of the sections, 

 agrees in all points with those on which SpengeP lays stress 

 in characterising the genus B alanoglossus, viz. — 



The absence of circular muscles in the trunk; the absence of 

 synapticula in the gill-bars ; the length of the divergent limbs 

 of the subnotochordal skeleton, which in the present species 

 extend backwards to the hinder end of the collar, being cut 

 through in the sections that include the collar-pore (fig. 4, r). 

 The longitudinal muscles of the collar region have a fan- 

 shaped arrangement around the end of this limb (fig. 4, g). 



' Naples monograph, 1893. 



