Oatty Marine Laboratory ^ St. Andreios. 375 



pushed the latter before it to the upper (rio;ht) side, where 

 expansion was making progress at the time of capture. On 

 the whole it seemed to belong to tlie group of the myxoma or 

 mucous tissue tumours, the great proportion of cells in its 

 structure giving it the character of a medullary myxoma. 

 Whether eventually it might have shown more harmful 

 characters is conjectural, though its vascularity and the rapid 

 cell-growth gave it a tendency to trouble in this respect. 

 The Hsh was fairly well nourished and ha<l recently taken 

 food. 



2. On the British Opheliidae, Scalibregmidrc, and 

 Telethusfe. 



In Dr. Johnston's Catalogue of the Collection in the 

 British Museum the foregoing families are placed under the 

 division Limivora, but it is doubtful if it would be distinctive 

 to consider that in such a form as Ophelia the dissimilar rings 

 divided the annelid into head, thorax, and abdomen, or that 

 there was no proboscis. 



The most conspicuous representative of the first family is 

 Ophelia Umacina, H. Kathke, which frequents such sandy 

 bays as that of St. Andrews in numbers, and is tossed on 

 shore in violent storms as an inert reddish-pink worm which 

 exhibits comparatively little motion on irritation, though it 

 is not devoid of hardihood. Almost all the examples thus 

 stranded are adult, so that the habits or habitat of the young 

 would seem to be different, and yet both abound in the 

 stomach of the haddock. The feet are about thirty-four in 

 number, the first ten having the pale iridescent bristles 

 supported by a fillet in front and behind, but at the eleventh 

 foot the ])osterior fillet is dorsally much eidarged as a lamella 

 behinil the bristles, and fiom it the long, tapering, branchial 

 cirrus extends. The bristles are long, simple, longitudinally 

 striated, and arranged in two tufts, the dorsal considerably 

 longer than the ventral, and both curving outward and back- 

 ward. The body diminishes abruptly j)osteriorly and ends in 

 a vent surrounded by about a dozen short cirri, two on the 

 ventral surface being much larger and in life coloured of a 

 deep red hue. The range of this species is wide, viz. from 

 Britain to Norway and Greenland, and, like other annelids, 

 it is a favourite tood of fishes. 



A small form (which may provisionally bo termed Ophelia 

 rathkei) dredged by the late Dr. Uwyn Jefireys in Valentia 

 Harbour apparently adds another species to Britain. Tlie 



25* 



