92 Memoirs of the Indian Museum. [Vol,. V, 



be identified. There can, therefore, be little doubt that prolonged exposure to fresh 

 water has much the same effect as it has on the medusa Acromitus rabanchatu 

 (p. i oi, postea). A larger proportion of the actinians, however, probably perish and 

 the physiological changes are produced more slowly. 



H. limnicola does not seem to have any fixed breeding season, for individuals 

 were found with apparently ripe gonads at all times of the year, even in November. 



Genus Edwardsia, Quatrefages. 



1889. Edwardsia, Haddon, Trans. Roy. Dublin Soc. (2) VI, p. 326. 



1895. ,, Faurot, Arch. Zool. expêrim. (3) V, p. 108. 



Edwardsia has been generally regarded as characteristic of temperate seas both 

 north and south of the Tropics, and I can find no reference to any undoubted species 

 from the Indian Ocean. Carlgren 1 has examined a representative of the closely allied 

 genus Edwardsiella from the Red Sea and East Africa, which was originally described 

 by Klunzinger* under the name Edwardsia pudica, and thinks that Edwardsia 

 adenensis, Faurot 3 from Aden is probably a synonym. E. arenosa, Klunzinger, is also 

 an Edwardsiella. 



Edwardsia tinctrix, sp. nov. 

 (Plate vi, fig. 3 ; plate vii, figs. 5, 5a ; plate viia, fig. 5.) 



When fully extended the whole animal is vermiform, and narrowly sausage- 

 shaped when the capitulum is introverted. The distinction between capitulum, 

 scaphus and physa is well marked in the former condition and that between the two 

 last regions in the latter. The scaphus is relatively long and slender, the capitulum, 

 which is not constricted, short. The naked physa is also short, but not so short as 

 in some species, it has a rather narrow ovoid form when expanded and bears at the 

 tip a circle of eight minute finger-shaped processes. These, however, are apt 

 to disappear in preserved specimens and in any case are so small that they can 

 only be seen under a high power of the miscroscope ; in structure they are solid 

 outgrowths, mainly of ectoderm and containing a large number of minute intracellu- 

 lar refractive granules. On the scaphus there are eight vertical rows of small but 

 prominent mamilliform tubercles corresponding in position to the eight mesenterial 

 spaces. The structure of these tubercles will be discussed presently. Not only the 

 whole of the capitulum but also a considerable part of the scaphus can be introverted. 



The sixteen tentacles are long, slender and pointed. The oral disk is narrow 

 but more or less tumid ; the mouth runs across the greater part of it. The tentacles 

 are not very highly contractile, but can be thrust into the mouth so far that their 

 tips extend into the physa. 



The capitulum, with the disk and tentacles, is translucent and often colourless, 



1 Mitt. Naturh. Mus. Hamburg, XVII (2), p. 46 (1900). 



2 Die Korallthiere des Rothen Meeres I, p 81, pi. vi, fig. 3. 

 8 op. cit., supra, p. 121. 



