Messrs. Woodward and Barrett on the genus Synapta. 217 



which answer to the hues of suckers (or ambulacra) of the other 

 Echinodermata. The skin was also mottled with minute red spots, 

 produced by epidermal papillae. We preserved every specimen we 

 could find, hoping to detect the " moUuskigerous sacs " in some new 

 phase of their development ; but in this we were entirely disap- 

 pointed. The intestines of the creature were filled with inorganic 

 mud, in which we detected an occasional Diatom or Rhizopod, but 

 nothing more. When placed in basins of sea-water, they showed 

 their tentacles freely, and most of them remained expanded when 

 preserved in spirit. They were very sluggish, and did not evince 

 much disposition to vomit their interiors or to break up into frag- 

 ments. We readily detected them in the dredge, even when obscured 

 with mud, by their clinging to the fingers, as described by Esch- 

 scholtz. 



In some examples the anchors are very few, and ranged in a double 

 line along the muscular bands. They vary from about twenty-five 

 in the field of the inch object-glass to three times that number. 

 Their length averages about -[{roth of an inch. The anchor-flukes 

 are sometimes plain, and sometimes barbed with three to five serra- 

 tions. The* anchor-plates are oval and leaf-shaped, having a pro- 

 cess (or stalk) at the end to which the anchor is articulated ; the 

 disk is perforated by four large simple holes surromided by au 

 irregular series of smaller openings ; the articular process has a slit 

 like the eye of a needle. In the northern specimens these plates 

 are rounded and rather "obcordate," but in those from the southern 

 locality they are longer, less regular, and somewhat contracted in 

 the middle ; the perforations also are larger in proportion, and more 

 angular. 



Some specimens possess a few great anchors, four times as long as 

 the rest, and with large flukes, lying with great regularity in the 

 interspace of the muscular bands ; their plates are correspondingly 

 large, and irregular in outline. 



All the anchors are fixed transversely to the length of the animal, 

 some being turned one way and some the other. 



Besides these, the skin contains innumerable smaller particles, or 

 miliary plates, which are especially crowded over the muscular bands. 

 They are oblong, or hour-glass shaped, and about ^th to ^th the 

 length of the anchor-plates, or from yg^^^jth to 5-5-jjth of an inch 

 long. 



By far the greater number of the anchors are imbedded in the 

 skin ; only a few rise above the surface or swing freely on their 

 pivots. They are developed beneath the epidermis, become liberated 

 by the wearing of the surface, and are themselves broken by use and 

 worn away and replaced by others. The anchors are developed 

 before the anchor-plates. First, we find a simple, slender spiculum ; 

 then another, longer and expanded at one end ; those only which 

 have attained their full length begin to develope flukes ; and it is 

 not until the anchors are completely grown that we detect any trace 

 of the anchor-plate. This also makes its appearance as a straight 

 needle lying beneath the middle of the shank ; in the next stage it 



