HERAPATH, ON THE GENUS SYNAPTA, 3 
M. Gallienne also informed him that this locality had shifted 
several yards nearer high water-mark since the Synapte 
were first discovered by him, two or three years ago. 
These interesting animals—the Synaptee—have the pro- 
perty, possessed in common with other echinodermata, of 
breaking up spontaneously, so that perfect specimens are 
obtainable only with difficulty. The absence of fresh sea 
water, and fear, may be the proximate motives prompting 
them to the act, as they commenced self-division almost 1m- 
mediately upon removal from their dwelling-place, and on 
being dropped into a bottle of sea water, which gradually 
filled with the captured prey. 
Many were brought home alive and perfect, but in an 
hour were mutilated extensively, although placed im a larger 
vessel well supplied with sea water, but, from accident, with- 
out sand; it did not depend, therefore, on a question of star- 
vation and loss of nutritive power, as some had imagined, 
but on mere change of place and the circumstances sur- 
rounding it; the principal of which might be the stimulus 
of light and heat. 
That these difficulties might be overcome is evident from 
the fact that Captain Wethered has contrived to domesticate 
three or four Synapte in a marine aquarium, and has even 
kept them twelve months therein, and obtained a brood of 
young in the early part of June, 1861. These have been 
well described by Professor Wyville Thomson, in the ‘ Quar- 
terly Journal of the Microscopical Society’ for 1862. 
Professor Thomson has had the kindness to send the author 
sdme specimens of his Belfast Synaptee, together with another 
Synapta obtained from a different locality, viz., Carrickfergus, 
on the Antrim shore of Belfast Lough. 
The original species described by him in the journal came 
from Holywood, and have been identified by this eminent 
naturalist as S. inherens of Miller, and synonymous with 
S. Duvernea of Quatrefages, whilst the Antrim or Carrick- 
fergus specimens, he states in his letter to the author, are in- 
termediate between this species and S. digitata; he has great 
doubts whether the species are really distinct. This opinion 
has, probably, been formed from a consideration of the external 
zoological character only. 
On carefully preparing slides from all these various speci- 
mens, and photographing the preparations, great differences 
are apparent in the forms of the anchors and anchor plates. 
Messrs. Woodward and Barrett have laid great stress upon 
the form and characters of the anchor plates as means of de- 
termining the species of Synapta, and from the author’s in- 
