846 General Notes. 
tentacle, or more properly, I suspect, ambulacral foot, and wave the 
oral tentacles about. course this attitude is not held long, the 
creeping position, using all the tentacles or feet being most usual. 
On the eleventh day a seventh tentacle, and on the fourteenth an 
eighth tentacle appears; the former from about the middle of the 
ventral surface, and the latter at the base of the oral tentacles on 
the ventral side. In the meantime the spines have been getting 
longer and their bases branching in various rosette forms. 
now have several larve fifteen days old getting along nicely, and 
from the four lots of eggs have saved forty-three vials of embryos, 
and so will probably get a complete series, as each set were no 
doubt fertilized at different times of the day and in any one lot the 
individuals do not develop evenly. 
“ These embryos seem to be intermediate between Kowalevsky’s, 
where the adult state is attained without a metamorphosis, and the 
one described by Selenka. Of course I cannot tell what goes on 
inside the shell those four or five days after gastrulation and before 
the larvæ develops tentacles, as the egg is so very opague. I should 
have said also that at first the eggs are brown, in a few days they 
show green pigment spots, and these increase until the free larva 1s 
quite green. 
“Tn two or three weeks I shall probably have an abundance of 
material for sectioning and then I want to take in hand the case of 
the brown Clypeaster, common about here. I am getting fond of 
the study of the Echinoderms and shall work on them as I get 
opportunity. 
“ We came across the birth of an extraordinary zoological myth 
out here a few weeks since. One of the leading citizens, who 1s 
also the school-master, had made a discovery. hereas they had 
always thought that the sea-stars come from the sand or from the 
big stars up above, now they had found the real source ‘ for true 
as they put it. They told x- of it and we thought we should be 
able to surprise the world with a borrowed discovery ! alas 
they took us down to the shoal, broke open the sand-dollars and 
pulling out ‘the creature’ showed us the wonder—their young 
sea-star! They supposed that this young sea-star stayed in you 
old shells until grown and could hardly believe us when we tol 
em that it was a live Clypeaster!”—C. L. E. 
