178 Miscellaneous. 
and offers remarkable possibilities for discovery. The same branch 
of marine research has been prosecuted for many years on the shores 
of the North Sea and the Mediterranean, and a large number of 
larvee, known to be such, but which have as yet not been raised into 
adults, have been described and figured. This provisional nomen- 
clature of a larval animal known to be such has been a means of 
attracting the attention of other naturalists to the larva, and in 
many instances has led to the discovery of the adult. 
The larval forms of marine animals of the coast of New England 
are varied in form and rich in number. ‘They are as different from 
those of Europe as the fauna of our bays and sounds is different from 
the European. We have few descriptions of these larval animals 
from our waters, and so different are they from the European that 
it is hard, almost impossible, to identify them. Shall we give these 
undoubted larvae new names which shall be provisional, or shall we 
delay publication until we have traced them to the adults? Some- 
thing is to be said in favour of both courses; but a description of a 
new stage of a larva by one observer may attract the attention of 
another naturalist, and fit into a series of observations otherwise 
complete, thus leading to a discovery which neither alone could 
possibly make from the material at his command. 
The object of the present paper is to record a brief notice of an 
unknown larva of peculiar morphology found in the Bay of Fundy. 
Its general affinities are apparent and will be spoken of later ; but 
its special relationship is unknown. It is hoped that this mention 
may meet the eyes of those interested in the study of the metamor- 
phosis of the marine animals of the United States, and attract the 
attention of some one who may be able to add to our limited know- 
ledge of it. No more interesting questions can at present be raised, 
so far as the determination of the facies of our marine fauna is con- 
cerned, than those which deal with the identification of the larval 
forms of life which inhabit the populous waters of our coast. 
A number of naturalists have expressed the belief that the larvee 
of some Annelids are closely related to the young of certain Bryozoa, 
and have supposed that the phylogenetic history of the two groups 
is closely interwoven. A young Cheetopod, which combines many 
characters of the larvee of the Bryozoa, is called Mitrarza. While 
several of the features which distinguish this larva are undoubtedly 
secondary modifications and are of little phylogenetic importance, 
the general form of Mitraria is believed to approach closely the 
prototype or ancestral form of both the Cheetopods and the Bryozoa, 
if not of the Brachiopods and other related groups. It is the purpose 
of the present paper to consider the form of a larva allied to M- 
traria from the Bay of Fundy, and to call attention to the interest 
attached to the study of this interesting animal. 
A true Mitraria has never been described from the coasts of 
North America. I have found specimens of this genus at the Ber- 
mudas and at Santa Cruz, California; but neither of these have 
been figured or described. No other naturalist has recorded Mitraria 
from American waters, and but few have found it in European seas. 
