THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 47. NOVEMBER 1861. 



XXXV. — On the Nurse- Genus Corymorpha and its Species, toge- 

 ther with the Medusa produced from them. By M. Sars*. 



In the year 1835, I described, under the name of Corymorpha 

 nutans, a colossal new Hydroid polype discovered by me in the 

 vicinity of Bergenf. The same form was subsequently detected 

 near the Orkneys by Forbes and GoodsirJ. 



In an important little memoir on the ' Marine Invertebrata of 

 Grand Manan/ which appeared in 1853, it is stated (p. 9) by 

 the American naturalist and circumnavigator, W. Stimpson, that 

 my Corymorpha nutans occurs in great abundance at Grand 

 Manan, Fundy Bay. As, however, he gives no more particular 

 description of the animal observed by him, and, as we shall show 

 hereafter, several very similar, but specifically distinct, forms of 

 Corymorpha occur in the northern seas, it must still be regarded 

 as doubtful whether the American species be truly identical with 

 C. nutans. 



The above was all the published information regarding this 

 genus of Hydroida, which, however, was supposed to be confined 

 to the northern seas, and of which only a single species was 

 known, until, in the year 1854, Professor Steenstrup described 

 a second, and indeed a tropical, species of this genus from Rio 

 Janeiro, under the name of Corymorpha Januariih. 



A Hydroid polype observed by 0. Schmidt, and figured in his 

 'Handatlas der vergleichenden Anatomie' (Jena, 1854), tab. 9. 

 fig. 2, of which, without describing it particularly, he makes a 



* Forliandl. i Vid. Selsk. i Christiania for 1859 ; translated from Wieg- 

 mann's Archiv, 1860, p. 341, by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S. 



t Beskr. og Jagtt. over Dyr ved den Bergenske Kyst, pp. 6-10, tab. 1. 

 fig. 3. 



X Ann. Nat. Hist. 1840, vol. v. p. 309. 



§ Vidensk. Meddelelser fra den naturhist. Forening i Kjobenhavn, 1854, 

 p. 46. 



Ann. §Mag, N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. viii. 23 



