A REPORT ON THE SIPUNCULOIDEA, COLLECTED BY 

 DR WILLEY AT THE LOYALTY ISLANDS AND NEW BRITAIN. 



BY 



ARTHUR E. SHIPLEY, M.A., 



Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer on the 



Morphology of the I nvertebrata. 



With Plate XVIII. 



Dr Willey brought back with him from the Loyalty Islands and New Britain, 

 twenty-three species of Sipunculoidea which are divided amongst the following genera: 

 Aspidosiphon, Cloeosiphon, Phascolion, Phascolosoma, Physcosoma and Sipunculus. Sis 

 of his species were found by Mr J. Stanley Gardiner (X) 1 at Funafuti and at Rotuma, 

 Mr Gardiner's collection contained seven species unrepresented in that of Dr Willey. 



I have added brief notes on some of the more important features of the species 

 catalogued and a list of the localities from which each has been recorded. An 

 examination of the latter seems to extend the view that I expressed in 1891 (XI) 

 as to the headquarters of the genus Phymosoma (now called Physcosoma) (IX). A 

 further examination seems to show that not only are the headquarters of the last 

 named genus in the Malay Archipelago, but that the seas which surround that group 

 of islands and which stretch up the east coast of Asia as far as Japan and round the 

 north and east of the great Australian continent, and throughout the South Pacific 

 abound in species of Aspidosiphon, Cloeosiphon, Physcosoma and Sipunculus. 



Several of Dr Willey's species occur elsewhere, some of them spread through the 

 Indian Ocean and have been collected in the Red Sea and off Mauritius and the 

 east coast of Africa, and several species are cosmopolitan. The genus Cloeosiphon is 

 confined to the seas mentioned above, both it and Physcosoma, and possibly Aspidosiphon 

 are usually found associated with coral-reefs, and this fact probably explains the paucity 

 of their numbers in the eastern waters of both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. 

 Physcosoma agassizii is however found along the West coast of both Americas from 

 Esquimault to Puntarenas 2 and again at the Loyalty Islands. 



1 The Roman numerals in brackets refer to the literature at the end of the article. For some of the 

 references I am indebted to Selenka's Monograph (vin.). 



2 The place here referred to is on the Straits of Magellan. It is not sufficiently recognized that there 

 are three places with this name on the Pacific Coast, besides one in Venezuela. A fact which once took 

 an unfortunate Spaniard many thousands of miles out of his direct route. 



