3W POLYNOE SCOLOPEKDBJNA. 



Its food consists of cellular substances with a few sponge-spicules. 



It is phosphorescent. On placing it in spirit luminous flashes were emitted from 

 the bases of the feet, and the same emissions were caused by irritating the posterior end 

 with the forceps. 



The remarkable difference in size and coloration between the southern forms from 

 the Channel Islands and those from the Outer Hebrides is an interesting feature, but one 

 in the British Museum from Falmouth is between four and five inches, so that caution in 

 making deductions is necessary. 



The most marked variety is that from the chinks of the hard gneiss of the Channel 

 Islands— in the burrows of Lysidice. It is less than two inches, very narrow-, and there 

 is a tendency to have dark brown pigment at the mouth and anterior ventral region. 

 It thus approached in bulk Lysidice itself, and the tints anteriorly were not dissimilar. 



The species was first found by d'Orbigny at La Eochelle, and by Savigny and 

 Audouin and Edwards on the shores of the Channel. The latter authors state that 

 it lodges in tubes of sand and shells agglutinated by a secretion, though they also 

 found it in company with Terebella. No instance of its occurrence in an independent 

 tube, manufactured by itself, is known in this country, and it is possible Audouin and 

 Milne Edwards may have met with it only in an empty tube of Terebella. 



De Quatrefages points out that Johnston's species diverges from that of Audouin 

 and Milne Edwards, since it has 110 segments. Further, that the appendages of the 

 head differ in proportion. Thus the median antenna is much longer than the inferior 

 tentacles, which are very large and conical; the lateral, again, are proportionally 

 small. The superior tentacles differ correspondingly. For the rest, the figures of the 

 bristles given by the respective authors diverge much. This author, however, laboured 

 under a misapprehension on the subject. 



Marenzeller in 1874 distinguished this from Savigny's species by the fact that the 

 tentacle was longer than the palpi, while the tentacular cirri were shorter than the palpi : 

 there are three rows of wart-like papillas on the dorsum of the segments. Moreover, his 

 P. crassipalpa comes near it, and may be the same form. I have not seen any reason to 

 think that Savigny's species differed from Johnston's, though two varieties exist ; and it is 

 satisfactory to find that Baron de St.- Joseph agrees with me in this respect as well as with 

 regard to the P. crassipalpa of the able naturalist of Vienna. Mr. Hornell observes that 

 nearly every haul of the dredge off Anglesey brought up at least one specimen, and in 

 one case it emerged from the tube of Thelepus cineinnatus. 



In the recent remarks 1 of Dr. H. F. Johnson on the Pacific annelids it would have 

 been very interesting to find the results of a comparison of such commensalistic 

 species as Polynoe reticulata, sp. nov., or P. gigas, sp. nov., with the well-known 

 P. scolopendrina. 



1 ' Annel. of the Pacific Coast/ Californ. Acad. Ser., 3rd ser., i, No. 5, 1896, p. 170 et seq. 



