282 CAPITELLA CAPITATA. 



1911. Gapitella capitata, Fauvel. Bull. Inst. Oceanogr., no. 194, p. 28. 



1912 - » » Mcintosh. Ann. Nat. Hist., ser. 8, vol. x, p. 126. 

 '» » ,; Gravier. 2 e Exp. Antarct. Fr. ; p. 121. 



1913 - ■> ,, Ehlers. Deutsch. Siidpol. Exped., p. 543. 

 » ,- „ Giard. CEuvres Div., p. 57. 



1914 - >' » Southern. Proc. lioy. Irish Acad., vol. xxxi, no. 47, p. 130. 



Habitat— Seashore in wet gravelly places (Dr. Johnston) ; abundant under stones at 

 the East Rocks, St. Andrews, and dredged in the Laminarian region in the Bay (E, 

 Mcintosh) ; between tide-marks in muddy sand, Clickamin, Lerwick ; Guernsey and 

 Herm, between tide-marks; Lochmaddy, North Uist (A. M., R. M., and W. C. M.) ; 

 common in black mud in Wembury and Rum Bays, Plymouth (Spence Bate, Rowe, and 

 Allen) ; Salthill, Co. Dublin (A. 0. Haddon) ; Dublin and Clew Bays (Southern). 



Cosmopolitan : Antarctic Sea, Magellan and Kerguelen (Ehlers) ; Madeira (Langerhans) ; 

 Greenland (Fabricius, Michaelsen, and Ditlevsen) ; Iceland (Leuckart); shores of France (De 

 Quatrefages, Fauvel, etc.) ; Mediterranean (Lo Bianco) ; Naples, in putrefying mud (Eisig). 

 European waters generally : Spitzbergen, Greenland, Scandinavia, Finmark 

 (Malmgren), Black Sea, and, indeed, in all the seas of Europe. It stretches to the Atlantic 

 coast of North America (Verrill, Webster and Benedict) and Madeira, and sometimes 

 occurs in swarms, different generations cropping up in the same locality. It occurred at 

 many stations in the < Porcupine ' expeditions, from the Atlantic to the Bay of Tunis. 



Head (Plate XCII, fig. 3) an elongated cone with two minute lateral papillae (the nuchal 

 organs). The mouth opens as a puckered orifice on the ventral surface of the peristomial 

 segment. The eyes are generally absent in spirit-preparations. A short clavate proboscis 

 can be protruded. 



Body about five inches in length, the swollen anterior region being about half an inch, 

 increasing in breadth from the peristomial segment backward to the sixth or seventh 

 and then slightly diminishing to the fourteenth, behind which the body is somewhat 

 narrower, though this distinction is often obliterated. It diminishes posteriorly and ends 

 in a knob-like or button-shaped process, often with a dimple in the centre, but reproduc- 

 tion of this region is so common that it is seldom a complete example is procured. The 

 body is rounded anteriorly, and when preserved has a tendency to a quadrangular 

 condition posteriorly, the ventral surface being flattened and generally grooved anteriorly, 

 the groove in the larger examples being specially marked at the eighth, ninth, and tenth 

 segments. On the lateral region of the body at the junction of the seventh bristled 

 segment with that following is a vertically elongated papilla with a deep fissure in its 

 centre apparently opening into the interior, whilst on the dorsum of the same specimen is a 

 transverse line of genital bristles with a fissure in the middle line at the junction of 

 this segment with the next (Fig. 132). On the ventral surface of the latter segment, 

 the second behind the seventh bristled segment, is the depression at the end of the furrow 

 leading into the aperture. 



The body is deep red anteriorly, pale behind, but the colours vary according to the 

 wave of the red coelomic fluid, and the skin is iridescent anteriorly. Some show a peculiar 

 piebald aspect posteriorly, dark grey and white being intermixed, the pale hue being due 

 to large peritoneal bodies and ova. 



