BIGELOW: MEDUSAE FROM THE MALDIVE ISLANDS. 257 
Aglaura prismatica Maas. 
Aglaura prismatica Maas, 1897, Mem. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. 12, p. 24, taf. 3. 
Lessonia radiata? Eydoux et Souleyet, 1841-52, Voyage de la Bonité, vol. 2, 
Zoophytes, plate 2. 
A species of Aglaura apparently identical with the Aglaura prismatica of 
Maas was one of the most abundant Medusae in the tow. We took it at 
almost every station, both inside and outside the atolls, often in large numbers. 
All our specimens were quite colorless and transparent, a condition similar to 
that observed by Agassiz and Mayer in several specimens from Fiji (Bull. Mus. 
Comp. Zool., vol. 32, p. 165, plate 4, fig. 13). 
Aglaura octagona, sp. nov. 
Plate 2, Fig. 9. 
The bell is distinctly octagonal, lantern-shaped, and flattened at the top; it 
is three mm. high, and about one half as broad. The walls, although exceed- 
ingly thin, are very rigid, and the vellum is provided with a series of circular 
muscles. There are about thirty-two tentacles, which in our specimens were 
all broken short off, leaving stumps behind. The peduncle is three fourths as 
long as the bell is high and cannot be retracted within the bell cavity. The 
stomach is short and globular, and the mouth bears four simple lips, which 
hang nearly on a level with the bell opening. The gonads are egg-shaped, and 
are borne at the junction of the radial canals with the stomach. There are 
eight interradial otocysts. The whole Medusa is perfectly colorless. 
Two specimens, December 30, off the east face of Kolumadulu atoll, in an 
open net at about one hundred fathoms. Aglaura octagona is very closely 
allied to Aglaura laterna Haeckel, from the Canary Islands. It differs, how- 
ever, in the following particulars : The peduncle is longer, the gonads are ege- 
shaped instead of spherical, and the tentacles seem rather more numerous. 
(Aglaura laterna has usually from sixteen to twenty-four.) The form of the 
bell in both species is identical, and in other general proportions they are very 
similar. The genus Aglaura falls into two well-marked divisions, one repre- 
sented by Aglaura hemistoma, with the closely allied varieties, prismatica 
Maas, from the Pacific, nausicaa Haeckel and vitrea Fewkes, from the Atlan- 
tic, characterized by the short peduncle; and the other represented by Aglaura 
laterna Haeckel, from the Canaries, and Aglaura octagona, sharply distin- 
guished by the long peduncle and lantern-shaped bell. I think it is probable 
that these may all prove to be merely geographical races of two well-defined 
species. 
Liriope Lesson, 1843. 
In the “Craspedoten Medusen der Deutschen Tiefsee-expedition,” p. 79, 
Dr. Ernst Vanhoffen has given an able analysis of this genus which he, follow- 
