622 PEOFESSOE E. EAT LANKBSTEE. 



A Contribution to the Knowledge of 

 Rhabdopleura. 



By 



E. Ray liankester, M.A., F.R.S., 

 Jodrell Professor of Zoology in University College, London. 



With Plates XXXVII bis, XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLI. 



Rhabdopleuea was discovered by the Rev. Alfred Merle 

 Norman, in deep water (90 fathoms) off the Shetlands, in 1868. 

 The original specimens were described by Professor Allman in 

 this Journal, vol. ix, 1869, p. 57, and many of the remarkable 

 characters of the new genus which he founded for the reception 

 of this form were fully recognised and discussed by him. 

 Subsequently Prof. G. O. Sars published (Christiania, 1872) 

 an account of Rhabdopleura, based upon specimens obtained 

 at a depth of 200 fathoms off the Lofoten Islands, and studied 

 by him in the living state. Sars's memoir was reproduced in 

 this Journal in 1874 (vol. xiv, p. 23). The specimens studied 

 by Sars were regarded by him as belonging to a different 

 species from that described by Allman, for which he proposed 

 the name Rhabdopleura mirabilis, Allman having named 

 his species Rh. Normani after the eminent naturalist, who 

 detected it in the contents of his dredge, and sent it to Allman 

 for study. I spent part of the summer (end of July to begin- 

 ning of September) of 1882 at Lervik, on the Island of Stordoe, 

 at the mouth of the Hardanger Fjord, near Bergen in Norway, 

 in order, among other things, to obtain living specimens of 

 Rhabdopleura, in the hope of clearing up certain doubtful 



