THE ANNALS 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 59. NOVEMBER 1872. 



XLV. — On the Hydroid Lar sabellarum, Gosse, and its Repro- 

 duction. By the Rev. Thomas Hincks, B.A., F.R.S. 



[Plate XIX.] 



Many years have elapsed since Mr. Gosse described, in the 

 * Transactions of the Linnean Society,' a remarkable Hydroid, 

 which he named Lar sahellarum. From that time to the 

 present nothing more has been heard of it ; and meanwhile it 

 has been regarded with a kind of polite suspicion, and has 

 held its place in our systematic works almost on sufferance. 

 The unique oddity of its configuration and the grotesqueness 

 of its attitude, as depicted by Mr. Gosse's pencil, are such as 

 to justify some amount of incredulity, or at least to create a 

 desire for further information. Allman, with a mixture of 

 courtesy and scepticism, says of it, " we are almost tempted to 

 regard it as an abnormal condition of some other form ;" and 

 in my '■ History of the British Hydroid Zoophytes ' I have 

 assigned it a provisional place, in the hope that some new light 

 might be thrown upon it by further observation. U jder tliese 

 circumstances it was with peculiar pleasure that . obtained 

 during the past summer a fine colony of this h; f-mytliical 

 Hydroid in full maturity, and am thus enabled, bot to remove 

 all doubts as to its true nature, and to complete the history 

 of which Gosse has driven us the first lines. 



The Lar was dredged off the (Sapstone at Ilfracombe ; and 

 its polypites were distributed along tlie margin of a SaheUa- 

 tube, the very habitat in -vwhich Gosse's specimen occurred. 



In the first place, I am able to vouch for the general accuracy 

 of the figure which its discoverer has given ur and can affirm 

 that, extraordinary as it foo/c.f, it does no moie than justice to 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 4. TV. x. 23 



