121 



also calcareous; but it often however shows a narrow, uncalcified transversely 

 placed area (fig. 13 c). 



The colonies consist of four-rowed segments, and the individual rows may 

 contain 4 — 12 zooecia. 



The specie^ is represented in our Zoological Museum from the Bass' Straits, 

 Port Denison, Queensland, Texas, West-Indies (St. Thomas), Ceylon and Siam, and 

 colonies from different places show differences, partly in the size, position and 

 shape of the avicularia, partly in the more or less strongly ascending distal wall, 

 and in the number of zooecia in the individual rows. 



N. (?) simplex Busk. 



Catalogue Marine Polyzoa, Cheilostomata, p. 19, PI. LXV, fig. 1; 



PI. LXV (bis), fig. 3. 



(PI. XXII, fig. 6 a). 



The zooecia are elongated, narrow, tongue-shaped or roundedly rectangular, 

 surrounded by projecting edges, which in their proximal half are sometimes 

 slightly sinuated. Within each lateral wall in the whole of its length there is a 

 low longitudinal ridge, and from this issues a cryptocyst, which especially distally 

 is rather deeply immersed and attains more than half the length of the zooecium. 

 The aperture of the latter is almost half the breadth of the zooecium. The distal 

 wall is in its innermost corner furnished with a multiporous rosette-plate, while 

 the distal half of each side-wall has a single uniporous plate. 



No avicularia or ooecia. 



The colonies have quadrilateral branches with 7 to 16 zooecia in each row. 



The Forinosa-Channel, 35 fathoms, Suensson, lat. 32" 22' N., long. 128M2' E., 

 170 fathoms (Suensson). 



Kirkpatrick has referred fragments of a colony from Mauritius to this 

 species, and the British Museum through that author has kindly permitted me 

 to examine the preserved and mounted small branches, on which the account of 

 Kirkpatrick is based. As I have not been able to examine this form completely, 

 however, I can only say here, that the outer resemblance is sufficiently great to 

 justify considering this form as a variety of N. simplex. The cryptocyst however 

 is far less developed. The proximally slightly projecting ooecia are in the largest 

 part of their surface only covered by the frontal membrane of the distal zooecium 

 (the ectoooecium), but a little proximally to their distal end also by a crypto- 

 cyst-bridge, which connects the two lateral margins of the zooecium and is lowest 

 in the middle, and which in Kirkpatrick's figure is seen as a low, and not 



