62 BOUGAINVILLEA BRITANNICA. 



1. Bougainmllea Britannica, Forbes (1841). 



Synonyms. Hippocrene Britannica. E. Forbes, in Annals of Nat. Hist., vol. vii, 



p. 84, pi. 1, fig. 2 (1841). 

 ^ Bougainvillea Britannica. Lesson, Acalephes, p. 291 (1843). 

 Medusa duodecilia. Dalyell, Animals of Scotland, p. 70, pi. H, 



figs. 11, 12 (?) (1847). 



This beautiful little animated bubble is nearly globular, and usually not much larger than 

 a marrowfat pea. Its umbrella is transparent, colourless, and quite smooth, therein differmg 

 essentially from the Hippocrene Bougainvillii of Brandt, which has pilose sides resembling, 

 in this respect, Thaumantias pilosella. (See Brandt, in Petersburg Memoirs, Sixth Ser., Sc. 

 Nat., vol. ii, pi. 20, figs. % 3, 4, and 6.) The opening of the umbrella is contracted and 

 quadrangular. At each angle is an oblong group of tentacle-bulbs, closely packed together, 

 six to eight in each group. Each bulb is particoloured, orange below, and white above, with 

 a red eye-dot on the white portion. The bulbs seem all united into one mass or pad at their 

 lower part, so that the tentacles are more close together at their origins than the ocelli. The 

 tentacles are as many as the bulbs, not very long, yet slender, white towards their bases, 

 orange towards their tips. The outer ones are usually borne curled upwards. The sub- 

 umbrella is small as compared with the umbrella, less than half its size. It is divided into 

 four sections by four simple gastric vessels, which join the marginal vessel opposite the groups 

 of tentacular bulbs. From its centre hangs the massy peduncle, consisting in its upper part 

 of four equal, compressed, quadrate lobes, of a bright orange colour, contracting below into a 

 short, tubular, orange stomach. The latter terminates in a mouth surrounded by four very 

 curious lips, for each is prolonged into a white filiform tentacle, which twice dichotomously 

 divides ; each division terminates in a bulbiform extremity of an orange colour, with dark 

 specks. The structure of these singular appendages to the mouth reminds us of the root- 

 like cotyledonary tentacles of Cephea among the higher Medusa, and serves to bear out 

 the view that those bodies are not substitutes for stomachs, absorbent roots, as it were, as 

 formerly supposed, but only a modified form of fimbriated lips. The gland-like appearance 

 of their extremities in Bougainvillea, seems to depend on terminal accumulations of fibrous and 

 pigment- cells. 



The Bougainvillea Britannica is a very active little animal, and very tenacious of life. 

 Its tentacula are continually in motion, and sometimes so contracted, that none appears to be 

 present. It is abundant, but probably not gregarious, in various localities in the north. I 

 have taken it in the Kyles of Bute, whence it was first described, at the entrance of the Frith 

 of Forth, in Zetland, and in Ballycastle Bay, on the north coast of Ireland. It has also been 

 taken on the east coast of Scotland by Mr. Henry Goodsir, and Mr. Patterson has communicated 

 a memorandum of a little Medusa, evidently this species, procured by him at Portaferry, 

 Strangford Loch, on the 7th of August, 1838, so that he had met with and obsen^ed it before 

 I had the same good fortune. 



Plate XII, fig. 1, a, represents this Bougainvillea of the natural size ; I, b, magnified, 

 and seen in profile ; 1, c, as seen from above ; 1, d, the lobes of the peduncle. Between 



