STEENSTRUPIA RUBRA. 73 



circumstances that both animals as yet have been found only in the Zetland and Orkney seas, 

 where that giant zoophyte was first enrolled among British species by Professor Goodsir and 

 myself, in 1839. The specimens taken by us had, however, their buds too immature to 

 permit of our perceiving the close resemblance and affinity of those bodies to true Medusae. 

 The apical process, which is so striking a feature of the following animals, is almost certainly 

 the remains of a funiculus by which the young animals were attached to its parent — but 

 whether that parent was a "nurse," guised as a hydriform Coryne, or a Medusa, like the 

 offspring, as we have seen to be the case in the gemmiparous Sarsice and Zi%zics, is a point 

 which fortunate future observations only can determine. 



1. Steenstrupia rubra, Forbes. 

 Plate XIII, Fig. 1. 



The umbrella of this strange little Medusae is conical, rather elongated, transparent, 

 smooth, and colourless. Its summit bears a little tentacle-like, fleshy, red appendage. Its 

 orifice is rather contracted and quadrangular. At each angle there is an elongated, slanting, 

 tentacle-like ocellus, fixed throughout, and terminating above in a bulb. This body is 

 entirely of a vermilion red. From the side and lowest part of one of them springs a very long, 

 thick, fleshy, bright-red tentacle, which twists and coils like a worm, and under the microscope, 

 presents a ringed and granulated structure. The sub-umbrella is oblong.. It is comparted 

 by four simple gastric vessels, running to the tentacular bulbs. Its orifice is surrounded by a 

 veil. From its centre depends a thick, tubular, very contractile, fieshy, red peduncle, 

 terminating in a round or imperfectly quadrate mouth. This peduncle is capable of great 

 chano-es of form, and sometimes presents an appearance as if it had a nucleus denser than 

 the substance composing its walls. Though highly extensile, it does not appear even to be 

 voluntarily produced beyond the opening of the disk. Its base is connected with the little 

 finger-like process on the apex of the umbrella, by a rather tortuous colourless cord, presenting 

 a tubular appearance. 



The length of the body is about a line and a half. Small as this Medusa is, it is very 

 conspicuous in the water, owing to the brilliant colouring and fleshy substance of its tentacles 

 and stomach. It is very active and tenacious of life ; before dying, assuming all manner of 

 strange shapes, doubling itself up, and turning its organs inside out in a terrific manner, giving 

 up the ghost with convulsions as fearful as those of a popular actor in the death-scene of a 

 tragedy. One of the least strange of these moribund attitudes is represented in Plate XIII, 

 fiff. 1, d, where the creature has constricted its body so as to assume the aspect of some twin 

 Acaleph, such as Diphyes. At such times, if we had not seen the animal previously in a 

 healthy state, it was very difficult to perceive any resemblance between it and the other 

 genera of its family. But when well and uninjured, it is an extremely active and regularly 

 formed creature, though, owing to the weighty and unbalanced tail which it is doomed per- 

 petually to drag as its train, it cannot advance through the water with the easy grace and 

 rapidity for which its alUes are remarkable, but struggles forward with frantic energy, con- 

 tracting and expanding rapidly, and without ceasing, reminding us of an escaped felon impeded 

 in his course by the dragging of his heavy fetters. When I first saw how the weight and 



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