272 



Miss I. B. J. Sollas on a new 



omitted it was merely overlooked owing to its extreme trans- 

 parency at this early stage and to the fact that weeds had 

 not as yet settled upon it. 



Three weeks after hatching (on Nov. 25) two individuals 

 were seen to show signs of budding ; the parent was retracted, 

 and though I watched it constantly I never saw it expand its 

 tentacles again, though dilatation and contraction of the 

 body-wall occurred. The retracted tentacles of the parent 

 lost their outlines and became an opaque mass (fig. 7), and 

 when the young bud grew more active and expanded con- 

 siderably (Dec. 4), it was clear that the original polyp had 

 degenerated. The two individuals had reached this stage of 



Fiff. 8. 



Young colony formed of descendants of individual B, Jan. 16, 1908. 

 Zeiss obj. A, eyepiece 2. 



budding when I left them until Jan. 15, 1908. I then found 

 that one was dead, and the other had given rise to a colony 

 (individual B, fig. 4) of four polypides. The valves of the 

 statoblast were still adherent to the young colony (fig. 8). An 

 ectocyst was present, but had to be looked for with great care 

 even after its presence was known, as it was so exceedingly 

 transparent and presumably of a refractive index not differing 

 much from that of water ; its surface is deeply folded or 

 wrinkled in parts, as seen in fig. 5. The polypides fed actively, 

 and soon buds appeared. On Jan. 20 I most unfortunately 

 handled the colony with a pipette which had been used in a 



