156 Cork Cuvierian Society. 



At the York meeting of the British Association, Mr. Peach exhi- 

 bited in 1843 a Holothuria from Cornwall with the local name of 

 Nigger or Cotton-spinner, but the species was not then identified ; it 

 was probably the same as the above specimens, but he says there were 

 four rows of suckers, a condition which could not be established from 

 any of those specimens of which Dr. Haines has now examined five ; 

 the ambulacra are so thickly placed beneath, that although there is 

 some linear arrangement, it requires close observation to see two hues 

 separating the lateral bands, while the central broader band has no 

 line running through it to constitute four rows of suckers. Dr. Haines 

 placed the several organs under the microscope ; the ova were of a 

 flattened oval form, approaching the pentangular, with a central clear 

 cell. The white tubes did not seem to possess any discoverable con- 

 tents ; they were found to be closely corrugated transversely, and those 

 corrugations could be drawn out to an immense extent^ exhibiting only 

 the finest possible membranous structure. The reticulated vessels 

 hanging from the margin of the intestine presented a very curious 

 appearance ; they were of a pinkish colour, and on compression it 

 seemed that a transparent pink tube had its external surface coated 

 with innumerable transparent minute corpuscles, especially in the 

 lower and coarser vessels : every examination showed that the clear 

 vessel lay on the glass, the corpuscles under compression spreading 

 out evenly on both sides of the vessel. 



It may be stated that these creatures were examined after being a 

 few days in Goadby's solution, having been forwarded by Mr. Black- 

 bum from Valencia, county of Kerry. This gentleman had described 

 the cotton-spinning appearance to Dr. Haines. 



One of the specimens carefully dissected had a considerable number 

 of the white tubes extruded, and it was in this individual that the 

 ovaria were found empty ; — is it not probable then that the male and 

 female organs had been called into operation about the same time, 

 supposing these white tubes to be vesiculae seminales ? The extremi- 

 ties of many of the white tubes were of a dark colour in their pro- 

 truded state, but possibly this was in some manner due to the action 

 of the solution. Blainville describes this animal as a Mediterranean 

 species. 



The peculiarity in this genus is the rudimentary and separate con- 

 dition in which each of the organs is found, without any parenchyma 

 or connecting cellular membrane, floating in one general cavity ; the 

 salivary ducts, the ovarian tubules, the vesiculae seminales at the op- 

 posite extremity, the respiratory lobules, and the lacework or circu- 

 lating vessels (may not these latter have some hepatic function ?), all 

 are here as if in their dissected state to show the parts of compound 

 organs. 



The other species exhibited by Dr. Haines was the Thyone papu- 

 losa ; it has ten beautiful ramifying tentacula. One of the specimens 

 presented the remarkable habit of the order, that of eviscerating it- 

 self; this is not done by turning the bowels inside out, but the tubes 

 attached at the vent break off, and part of the circle round the ten- 

 tacula separates laterally, when the whole contents with their trans- 



