EUPHYSA AURATA. 71 



with two crimson lateral pads, and an ocellus of the same colour between them. From each 

 springs a tentacle, long, translucent, slender, curling, pale, or colourless. Centrally on the 

 margin, between each pair of tentacles, is a smaller tubercle ocellated with crimson, but 

 bearing no tentacle. On each, side of this are three colourless tubercles, all very small, but 

 the central one shghtly larger than the others. The marginal vessel is rather large and 

 conspicuous. The sub-umbrella occupies about two thirds of the umbrella, and is slightly 

 conic in form. From its centre hangs an ample balloon-shaped peduncle, obsoletely four-lobed, 

 the lobes of a brilliant crimson hue, the interspaces yellowish-white. I think it probable 

 that the young are produced by gemmation from the crimson spaces. The peduncle 

 terminates in a contracted neck, widening into a campanulate mouth, with four, rather short, 

 lanceolate lips. This orifice is white, with four crimson lines. The peduncle sometimes 

 contracts into a distinctly four-lobed form, and the lips are then more distinct than usual. 



The Modeeriaformosa was taken by Mr. M'Andrew and myself off Mull, in the Hebrides, 

 during the autumn of 1845. 



Plate VII, fig. 1, a, represents it of the natural size ; 1, J, magnified ;!,<?, seen from 

 above; 1, d, the stomach or peduncle contracted; a slight inequality of the ovarian lobes 

 maybe observed; 1, e, a portion of the crimson bands of the peduncle much magnified, 

 showing the structure of the supposed germinal membrane \,f, two of the tentacles, and the 

 tubercles of the interspace (by mistake the small tubercles are represented as too few by four) ; 

 1, gi structure of a tentacle and its bulb. 



Genus XVIL Euphysa, Forbes. 



Umbrella globose, inflated ; ovaries in the base of a flask-shaped peduncle, with 

 a simple orifice at the end of a proboscidiform stomach ; vessels four, simple, joining 

 the gastric vessel opposite four conspicuous ocellated tubercles, from each of which 

 arises a short, slender, recurved cirrus, and from one a supplementary large tentacle. 



Euphysa aurata, Forbes. 

 Plate XIII, Fig. 3. 



I have constituted this genus for the reception of a very beautiful little Medusa taken 

 in 1835, in Brassay Sound, Zetland. At first I included it in my genus Steenstrupiu, and it 

 is one of the three species of that group announced at the meeting of the British Association 

 at Southampton. But although bearing a close affinity with Steenstrupia through the 

 arrangement of its tentacles, and the form of the stomach, it presents characters, such as the 

 construction of the umbrella, the presence of conspicuous ovaries, the absence of an apical 

 appendage, and the freedom of its lesser tentacles, which must be regarded as generic. It is 

 indeed evidently of higher rank in the series than Steenstrupia, which, we shall presently see, 

 has many of the features of a rudimentary animal, a stage in the metamorphoses of some 

 creature in a different order. 



