Tlie Blue Gyancea. 151 



opposite the division between them. Each of these processes 

 is closer to its neighbour on one side than to that on the other, 

 owing to the alternate variation in the width of the pouches on 

 which they are seated. Their form is much longer than wide, 

 and they, too, are furnished with folds, which, however, run 

 lengthwise, and contain rows of vesicles. From these processes 

 the digestive cavity now expands on all sides, sending out 

 ramifications to the margin of the disk. 



The tentacles, which are slender threads of no great length, 

 spring not from the edge of the disk, but partly from the outer 

 margin of the pouches, and partly from that side of each pro- 

 cess which faces its more remote neighbour. 



Close around the orifice of the stomach, which occupies the 

 centre of the inferior surface, arise four lips, which are thrown 

 into strong longitudinal folds, but which, when extended, are 

 seen to have a flat three-sided form. They do not cohere to- 

 gether so as to form a foot-stalk. 



In full-grown individuals the germs or ova are apt to fall by 

 their own weight out of the ovaries, and hang down in strings 

 or masses between the folded lips. 



There is enough in this diagnosis of the genus, which I have 

 freely transferred from Eschscholtz, to enable us to identify our 

 elegant specimen as a Gyancea, while yet in several particulars 

 there is a divergence. The pouches are very nearly of equal 

 width ; at least, though they vary slightly in this respect, there 

 is no noticeable alternation of a wide and a narrow one in regular 

 succession. Again, the diverging processes are but eight in 

 number, of a semi-elliptic figure, each seated half on two con- 

 tiguous pouches, its median line corresponding to the line that 

 divides them. Possibly, however, this semi-ellipse may be re- 

 solvable into two processes placed side by side in close contact ; 

 the line of junction (if of two), or the centre (if of one), being 

 immediately opposite the curious little eye-sac, which I will 

 presently describe. 



As to the species, I have some difficulty. Eschscholtz has 

 described but four : of these, the G. ferruginea, of Behring's 

 Straits, and the G. rosea, of the Australian seas, may be set 

 aside at once : there remain G. capillata and G. Lamarcliii of our 

 own coasts. The former of these, with its great tawny disk and 

 lips, its stomach-pouches alternating in width, but about equal 

 sided, and their long, narrow, parallel-sided, obliquely truncate 

 processes, may also be dismissed. There remains, therefore, 

 but G. Lamarclcii, and with this our captive tolerably well 

 agrees. The Prussian zoologist describes this species as having 

 its disk covered with indistinct large flat grains, and of a 

 whitish tint, but so faint as to be hardly perceptible. Tho 

 margin has eight deep incisions, which separate as many broad 



