278 ON THE GENUS LUCERNARIA. 
citing Fabricius as the author of the genus. Fabricius him- 
self afterwards described his Greenland species accurately 
under the generic name given to it by his friend, and Gmelin 
placed the new and very anomalous-looking genus with the 
Actinie, Holothuriz, Medusze, and Asteroide, under the 
Linnean order Vermes: Mollusca. 
For a long time the new genus could find no systematic 
place, until, owing to the increased knowledge acquired of 
the zoophytic division of animals, fresh points of comparison 
for this remarkable form were perecived. Even at this early 
period we meet with the two views, which have pre- 
vailed up to the present day, respecting the position of 
Lucernaria; aceording to one—that of Lamarck—the genus 
belongs to the Medusoid class, whilst according to the other, 
adopted by Cuvier, it was deemed to be more appropriately 
placed near the Actinie. 
Lamarck placed the genus with the Siphonophore and 
Ctenophora, in his division of “ radiaires molasses” that is 
to say, of anormal Radiata, though recognising, nevertheless, 
its affinity with the “radiares médusaires,” a view in which 
F. Dujardin, m the second edition of Lamarck’s work, is dis- 
posed strongly to agree, although he leaves the genus in 
the place assigned to it by Lamarck. 
In opposition to his great colleague at the Jardin des 
Plantes, Cuvier held that the genus Lucernaria must be ap- 
proximated to the Actinie, as Lamouroux had before said, 
and formed out of it, together with Actinia and Zoanthus, his 
first order, Acaléphes fixes, in the class Acalephz. Latreille 
was of the same opinion, and established an order of Radiata 
—the Helianthoidea—of equivalent value to the Acalephz 
and polypes, and including Lucernaria and Actinia. 
The systematic place indicated by Cuvier met with univer- 
sal assent ; and by nearly all writers, as Schweigger, Blainville, 
Ehrenberg, Johnston, Van der Hoeven, Dana, Troschel, 
Burmeister, &c., Lucernaria was considered to be closely 
allied to Actinia, and both genera share the same fate in 
further systematic arrangements, although some writers, as 
Ehrenberg, Allman, Van der Hoeven, and Burmeister, re- 
cognising its relations to the Meduse, have doubted the cor- 
rectness of placing it amongst the Actiniz. 
Lucernaria was first removed from its place near Actiniz 
when its structure became better known through the re- 
searches of Sars, Frey and Leuckart, and Milne-Edwards, and 
Leuckart placed it among the polypes, in a second order— 
the Carycozoa, of equal value to the AnrHozoa. 
It would seem that Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime, quite 
