386 REPORT—1863. 
a bud from a blastostyle. In the female colonies, however, nucleated spherical 
bodies, in no way distinguishable from young ova, are found in the walls of 
the blastostyle itself, between whose ectoderm and endoderm they seem to lie 
(fig. 9k). [have not succeeded in satisfactorily tracing the destination of these 
bodies ; but I have reason to believe that the true gonophores bud forth from 
that part of the blastostyle in which the nucleated bodies occur, and that 
these, as young ova, pass from the blastostyle into the budding gonophore, 
where they would then naturally occupy their normal position between the 
endoderm and ectoderm of the manubrium, destined to undergo there a fur- 
ther development before being discharged into the acrocyst, which, as we have 
already seen, exists in this species. Each gonophore, after having performed 
its duty as a receptacle, in which certain intermediate stages of development 
take place, would seem to disappear, and be succeeded by another, which in 
a similar way receives its young ova from the blastostyle on which it buds*. 
TY. Comparison OF THE SEXES IN THE HypRorpa. 
The existence of differentiated sex in the Hyprorpa was first announced by 
Ehrenbergt, who maintained that the so-called “ egg-capsules”’ in Coryne, 
Sertularia, &c., had the significance of special fertile animals to which he 
gave the name of females, while he regarded the ordinary polypites as the 
sterile individuals of the colony. 
With this announcement we may date a well-marked era in the history of 
progressive discovery among the Hyprorpa ; for it is to the happy conception 
of Ehrenberg that we must refer the more philosophic views which within 
the last few years have so greatly advanced our knowledge of the structure, 
functions, and relations of these animals. 
The celebrated German micrologist, however, did not grasp the full mean- 
ing of the facts of which he had thus so nearly given us the exact interpre- 
tation ; for he regarded the central column (blastostyle) of the gonangium in 
Sertularia as the equivalent of the central diverticulum (spadix) in the gono- 
phore of Ooryne, while he viewed the gonophores borne on the sides of the 
blastostyle in Sertularia as merely eggs equivalent to the true eggs contained 
in the gonophore of Coryne. 
The doctrine of the sexual differentiation of the Hyprorma was confirmed 
by Lovén in a remarkable memoir originally published in the Transactions 
of the Royal Swedish Academy for 1835, and thence translated into Wieg- 
mann’s Archiyt. In this memoir Lovén gives an account of those singular 
extracapsular medusiform gonophores which are described above (p. 375) 
under the name of “ meconidia;” he found them in a species of Laomedea 
(L. Lovéni, Allm.), and recognizes in them their true sexual function. He 
also describes the occurrence of medusiform gonophores in two species of 
Coryne ; and having observed that in the gonophores of one of these species 
the cavity of the umbrella was filled with ova, he distinguishes them from 
* Bodies undoubtedly of the same nature as those here described, but without any in- 
dication of a nucleus, are figured by Agassiz in an American species which he regards as 
identical with the Sertularia pumila of Europe. He, however, makes no allusion to them 
in the text of his work (op. cit. pl. 32. f.9). They are described also by Lindstrém, 
op. cit. 
+ Corallenthiere, Abhandl. der Kénigl. Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, 1832. Erst Theil, 
8. 333. 
t Beitrige zur Kenntniss der Gattungen Campanularia und Syncoryne, Wiegm. Arch. 
1837. Erster Band, 8. 239. 
