CLASSIFICATION OF ACTINIARIA 273 



pretend to go into detail about it, but I venture to support 

 T e a 1 i a as the best name to use, even if the legahty is doubt- 

 ful — in any case something would be doubtful. Urticina 

 is too ambiguous, and although it probably contained one of 

 our common forms it seems justifiable to reject it in favour 

 of the non-ambiguous Tealia. Khodactinia, Agassiz, 

 has priority, but although E . d a v i s i i seems to be identical 

 with one of the forms more usually called crassicornis 

 or coriacea, yet the genus is insufficiently described and 

 is not free from ambiguity. Tealia is well defined and a 

 familiar name, and seems clearly to have the advantage. 



I cannot accept Carlgren's division of the genus into two 

 distinct genera — Tealia and Ehodactinia — because it 

 cannot (as McMurrich has already pointed out) be upheld by 

 anything stable. With regard to species under the genus, 

 I do not like to speak with finality ; but my experience with 

 living specimens and study of literature suggests that there is 

 really no valid way of splitting up our British forms into 

 species — I imagine that they are all races or forms of one 

 variable species, but the warts and other things do vary 

 ii great deal. This has not always been my opinion, and 

 it is the kind of point about which one is liable to change one's 

 mind more than once — the other possibility being to regard 

 our British forms as two species (the extremes are certainly 

 very different from each other in appearance) with intermediate 

 grades. Clubb's two Antarctic species are certainly distinct 

 from ours, but seem very like each other, and in some ways 

 verge towards Bunodactis — might even be members of 

 that genus, though Tealia-like in build and probably best 

 left where they are. As to the right specific name for the 

 British species, it will perhaps always be a disputed thing, but 

 on the idea that we have only one variable species the name 

 crassicornis has priority over coriacea. I have seen 

 Bolocera eques, Gosse, alive, and it is simply a form of 

 T. crassicornis. 



It has been suggested that the irregularly arranged verru- 

 cae of Tealia must really be in vertical rows since they 



