66 THE MICROSCOPE. 
“There are very interesting highly refractile red spots of a 
problematical function covering the bracts in Agalma sarsii and 
Agalma clavatum. * * * The spots on each side of a central 
line are arranged on every scale in irregular rows, extending longi- 
tudinally across the bract, each pigment spot being enclosed in a 
cell. These peculiar pigment spots of the covering scales, repre- 
sented also in some genera, as in Apolemia, by elevations composed 
of clusters of cells on the surface of the bract, are the most apparent 
structures in the transparent tract of <A. sarsii, since, with that 
exception, there is hardly any coloration in the covering-seale. In 
Agalma clavatum, the sexually mature young of A. sarsii, only four 
rows of these pigment spots occur, as Leuckart has shown. When 
the bracts which bear these paralleled rows of spots are detached from 
the axis, their color changes to yellow, and a fluid of the same color 
exudes into the surrounding water. I have not been able to find 
in the descriptions by other naturalists any mention of this rupture 
of the cell wall and discharge of a yellow fluid when the bract is 
detached. I think these scale-cells belong to the ectodermie layer.” 
Bedot in his account of A. clausi finds similar glands in this species, 
but was unable to find them in Agalmopsis sarsii. It seems possi- 
ble that in my account I may have confounded the two species, as 
others before me, and that the species which was observed to discharge 
the coloring fluid is that separated from A. sarsii under the new 
name, A. clausi Bedot. 
Dr. Bedot also finds that the detachment of the scale is not 
necessary for the discharge of the coloring matter, and from the 
fact that only the anterior bracts of the colonies have this colored 
pigment in the glands, reasons that the posterior covering scales had 
evacuated their coloring matter, “au moment ot !Agalme a été cap- 
turée.”” His conclusion is undoubtedly well founded, and in support. 
of it I may mention an observation, never recorded by me, that I 
have seen a discharge of the color from bracts still attached, and 
while the animal was alive. I have also observed that it is only 
when disturbed that this coloring fluid is discharged frem the 
glands. 
Nor is the discharge of a coloring matter limited in the Physo- 
_ phores to the colored glands* of the bracts, The same or similar 
colored discharge takes place in another genus from certain organs 
called tasters, which have open extremities. This phenomenon is 
recorded by Haeckel in Forskalia, and I have also observed it ina 
* The term ‘‘ gland’’ is preferable to “ cell,’ by which in my original account there 
structures were designated, as Redot has already pointed out. 
