966 PROF. J. p. McMURRICH ON 



meseiitei'ial filament is greatly thickened and veiy granular, us 

 if from the presence of ingested food- material. The eight im- 

 perfect mesenteries are destitute of mesenterial filaments and, 

 indeed, I'epresent only the muscular portion of the perfect 

 mesenteries. Their muscle-processes are but few in number and 

 tiiey do not possess any distinct pai'ieto-basilar muscle. There 

 is no difference in the development of the various perfect 

 mesenteries such as Faurot has described for P. hastaia ; all are 

 provided with mesenterial filaments and are alike in all 

 particulars. 



The first description of a form that may definitely be assigned 

 to the genus Feachia is that furnished by Reid (1848) of a species 

 washed ashore in the Bay of St. Andrews and named Actinia 

 cylindrica. This name had, howevei-, already been employed by 

 Renier (1804) for Gerianthus membratiacetis, and has therefore 

 given place to the term Feachia hastata, proposed by Gosse (1855) 

 for a form with which Reid's species is evidently identical. In 

 the following year Koren and Danielssen described under the 

 na,me SiphonaCtinia boeckii a form that is certainly congeneric 

 with the Feachia of Gosse, aaid that author in 1860 described two 

 additional members of the genus, F. undata and F. triphylla. 

 No further additions to the list of species were made until 1879, 

 when Hutton described as F. carnea a form cast up on the beach 

 at Dunedin, New Zealand; a little later Andres (1883) described 

 as Siphonactiii/ia tricapitata a form from Naples that he had 

 originally (1881) considered identical with Gosse's F. triphylla, 

 and in 1893 I described F. koreni from off the coast of the 

 Ai'gentine Republic. There seems to be no room for doubt as to 

 the distinctness of F. q%miquecapiiata from P. hastata : the form 

 of the conchula, the equality of all the perfect mesenteries, and 

 the feebler development of the longitudinal musculature of the 

 imperfect ones furnish suflicient bases for their separation, in- 

 dependently of their coloration and geographical distribution. 

 F. koreni, with only eight teirtacles and a simple conchula, may 

 also be regarded as distinct, and although the description of 

 F. catmea is very incomplete, its geographical distribution is 

 p)rirtia facie evidence of its distinctness also. 



With regard to the remaii:iing four species, all of which are 

 European, the evidence is not so clear, since no anatomical data 

 concerning them are available. F. tmdata, from the Channel 

 Islands, is believed by Haddon (1889) and G. Y. & A. F. Dixon 

 (1891) to be merely a young example of F. hastata, its conchula 

 resembling that of immature examples of the latter species. 

 F. triphylla, also from the Channel Islands and the Firth of 

 Clyde (Robertson, 1869, 1875), on the other hand, has a conchula 

 composed of three lamellar processes, and in this resembles 

 F. boeckii ; the latter, however, bearing the lamellae upon the 

 summit of a tubular prolongation of the siphonoglyph, whereas 

 in Gosse's figure of F. triphylla they are represented as sessile. 

 The difference may, however, be due to a difference in contraction, 



