ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
On the Genus Synapra, with some New Britis Srxcizs. By 
Wittiam Birp Herapata, M.D. Lond., F.R.S.L.& E. 
(Plate I.) 
(Read Section D British Association, Bath, Sept. 16, 1864.) 
Tue little vermigrade Synapta has long been an interesting 
myth to most microscopists, very few of whom have ever 
had an opportunity of examining any perfect specimen of the 
animal itself in the preserved condition, and still fewer have 
ever seen it in its native haunts, or watched it during life. 
In fact, until the last few years it has been chiefly from 
foreign shores that we have obtained our specimens of those 
curious anchors for which the Synapta has been hitherto 
principally known to microscopists. 
Even our chief standard work on British Echinodermata 
does not contain any example of Synapta; the figure of 
Chirodota was probably intended for this animal, but its 
drawing is singularly inaccurate, and must have been made 
from a dried specimen or from description ; it could never have 
been seen by Professor Forbes in a living condition. Our 
best microscopical works dismiss the subject in a very sum- 
mary manner, and but few papers have been written upon 
them in the English language. M. Quatrefages has described 
a Synapta which he had found on the shore of the Chaussey 
Islands, a point off St. Malo, on the French coast in the 
Channel, and had called it S. Duvernea. This is a most 
admirable paper, and enters minutely into the anatomy and 
physiology of the animal, and is most exhaustive of the sub- 
ject ; it is to be found in ‘ Annal. des Sciences Nat. Zoolog.,’ 
t. xvii, xvill. There is also an admirable paper by Messrs. 
Woodward and Barrett on the S. digitata and S.inherens in the 
‘Quarterly Journal of the Zoological Society’ for 1858, p. 360. 
And Professor Wyville Thomson has given, in the ‘Micro- 
VOL. V.—NEW SER. A 
