Prof. Allman on the Hydroid Zoophytes. 141 



III. Coryne eximia, nov. sp., and its Medusa. 



Attached to rocks and the stems of Laminaria digitata, there 

 may be met with, at low spring tides in the Firth of Forth, a 

 Coryne which I am unable to refer to any described species. It 

 grows in large entangled masses, attaining the height of 3 or 4 

 inches. It is much and very irregularly branched, but with the 

 ultimate (polypiferous) ramuli mostly unilateral and springing 

 nearly at right angles from the supporting branch. The larger 

 branches are about O02" in diameter, and the polypiferous 

 ramuli about OOl". The branches are for the most part annu- 

 lated at their origin ; and the short polypiferous ramuli are 

 similarly annulated throughout their entire length. The whole 

 zoophyte is of a pale pink colour, becoming somewhat brighter 

 in the polypes, and caused by the fine carmine- coloured granules 

 of the coenosarcal cavity and stomach, with their tint more or 

 less modified by transmission through the surrounding structures. 



The polypes have from 20 to 30 tentacula. In all the speci- 

 mens I examined, four tentacles were situated in a regular verticil 

 immediately behind the mouth ; and the remaining tentacles 

 were scattered over the body of the polype, with scarcely any 

 tendency to a verticillate arrangement*. 



From many of the polypes, gonophores were abundantly 

 evolved. They budded forth from the upper side of the roots of 

 the tentacles, each supported on the summit of a rather long 

 peduncle, and including a single Medusa. Some polypes thus 

 carried a gonophore at the base of almost every tentacle. 



If this fine Coryne should really prove, as I believe, unde- 

 scribed, I would propose for it the name of C. eximia, with the 

 following diagnosis : — 



Char. — Stem much and irregularly branched, forming dense 

 entangled masses, with the ultimate ramuli mostly unilateral. 

 Polypary corneous, with the idtimate ramuli annulated in their 

 whole length, and the greater number of the other branches 

 with annulations at their origin. 



Polypes with from 20 to 30 tentacula, which are scattered 

 over the surface of the body with scarcely any tendency to a 

 verticillate arrangement, except the first four, which are disposed 

 in a crucial verticil behind the mouth. 



Gonophores simple, medusiferous, pedunclcd, springing from 

 the bases of the tentacles over the greater part of the body. 



The Medusas, when liberated from the ectothecal investment 



* A point of some interest in the structure of the polype may here be 

 mentioned. The stomach is not a direct continuation of the canal of the 

 ccenosarc, but the latter enters it upon the summit of a larpe papilliform 

 lobe of the endoderm. This condition will, I believe, be also found in 

 Hydractinia, and is probably not unfrequent among the Tubularidae. 



