Structure of Medusae 39 



central pistil ; and it included animals so different as 

 the starfish and sea-anemones and Medusae. The 

 names used in the classification were not only loosely 

 applied but were based on the most superficial observ- 

 ation, and took no account of the intimate structures 

 ""of the tissues and organs of the animals. With slight 

 modifications, due to individual taste or special know- 

 ledge of small groups, later writers had followed I^in- 

 nseus and Cuvier. 



It was with a view of the animal kingdom not much 

 clearer than this that Huxley began his work on the 

 Medusae of the tropic seas. He began to study them 

 no doubt simply because they were among the most 

 abundant of the animals that could be obtained from 

 the ship. He made endless dissections and drawings, 

 and, above all, studied their minute anatomy with the 

 microscope. They were all placed among Cuvier' s 

 Radiata, but, as Huxley said in the first line of his 

 memoir : 



"Perhaps no class of animals has been investigated with so 

 little satisfactory and comprehensive result, and this not for 

 the want of patience and ability on the part of the observers, 

 but rather because they have contented themselves with stating 

 matters of detail concerning particular genera and species, in- 

 stead of giving broad and general views of the whole class, 

 considered as organised upon a given type, and inquiring into 

 its relations with other families." 



He found that fully developed Medusae consisted each 

 of a disc with tentacles and vesicular bodies at the 

 margins, a stomach, and canals proceeding from it, and 

 generative organs. He traced this simple common 

 structure through the complications and modifications 

 in which it appeared in the different groups of Medusae, 

 in all this work bringing out the prevailing features of 



