434 EUNICE NORVEGICA. 



ward. The terminal piece is rather broad and short, is bifid, and has wings. The ventral 

 cirrus has a large granular swelling at its base, its own outline being conical. The foot 

 generally is vascular. The same type of structure remains at the twentieth foot (Plate 

 LXXIII, fig. 10 a), except that the blood-vessel going to the branchia is larger, and the 

 organ has five divisions, as has also the thirtieth foot, but the great hook has now appeared 

 below the jointed bristles. The basal enlargement at the ventral cirrus has disappeared 

 at the fortieth foot, and the setigerous region is less prominent, a feature still more 

 characteristic of the posterior region, where both kinds of bristles are fewer. In the 

 terminal segments the dorsal bristles are shorter, but the jointed, though few, are 

 prominent, as also are the great hooks (one in each foot). The crown of the hook 

 (above the fang) is often bifid (Plate LXXXIII, fig. 7 6). 



Reproduction. — Lo Bianco l gives September as the month in which the Neapolitan 

 examples are mature. 



Habits. — It is a vivacious and irritable species, and breaks if much interfered with. 

 Eisig 2 found this form very agile on the ground, paddling its way over the sand, and an 

 active swimmer. It also readily secretes a tube, and covers it with sand. When decapitated 

 the head is reproduced in about nine weeks. 



Delle Chiaje, in his ( Memorie,' 1829, describes and figures what apparently is this 

 form as Nereis zonata and N. vittata, though the tints are brighter than in northern 

 waters, and the arrangement of the gills and other features are not very accurately 

 figured by the artist of the Italian naturalist. 



Ehlers (1868) re-described this as a new species in the second volume of his ' Borsten- 

 wurmer ' from examples procured at Quarnero in the Adriatic. 



Claparede (1868) found an example devoid of the third (smaller) transverse brown 

 band in the segment, and it would appear that this species is more definitely pigmented 

 in the Mediterranean than in the north. This author pointed out the identity of Delle 

 Chiaje's Nereis vittata with this species, though the figures are far from being 

 accurate in detail. The same author (Claparede) in his Supplement (1870) observes that 

 on the forty or fifty last segments, devoid of branchiae, he found a pigment spot at the 

 base of each foot, forming a minute eye with a lens. Similar spots occur in E. fascia ta, 

 E. rubrocincta, and Hyalinoecia rigida, but they are less superficial. 



3. Eunice norvegioa, L., 1766 (= pennata, 0. F. M.). Plate LXIII, figs. 4 and 4 a — teeth ; 

 Plate LXXIV, figs. 11 and 11 a— feet; Plate LXXV, figs. 1 and 1 a— feet; Plate 

 LXXXIII, figs. 8 and 8 a, and 9-9 c for var. BA. — bristles. 



Specific Characters. — Head with five long tentacles, which in spirit have an articula- 

 tion at the tip. Eyes two, of considerable size, black. Palpi fused, leaving a deep notch 

 in front and a deep groove ventrally, whilst superiorly they are pitted. Body 6 — 8 ins. 

 in length. First segment three or four times the breadth of the second, with a lateral 

 notch on each side ventrally. The second segment is even narrower than the succeeding. 



1 'Mitth. Zoo]. Stat. Nap./ xiii, p. 486. 



2 ' Fauna u. Fl. Neap./ xxviii, p. 213. 



