852 MR JAMES MURRAY ON 



Note — Correction of Name. 



Macrobiotics furcatus, Murray. 



This name was given to a species collected by the Scottish National Antarctic 

 Expedition in the South Orkneys (" Tardigrada of the South Orkneys," Trans. Roy. Soc. 

 Edin. xlv., 1905, p. 327, Plate II. figs. 6a to 6d). I was then unaware that 

 Ehrenberg had already used the name for an Alpine species in 1859 (11). M. furcatus, 

 Ehr., appears to have escaped the attention of all subsequent writers on Tardigrada 

 whose works I have been able to consult. My error was pointed out by Professor 

 Hay of Washington, and I now correct it and give the species another name. 



Macrobiotus furciger, n. sp. (Murray) ( = M. furcatus, Murray). 



Description. — Large (up to 600^), hyaline. Claws of each pair united for about 

 half the length of the larger claws ; supplementary points very strong. Teeth strong, 

 curved ; gullet wide ; pharynx shortly oval, with conspicuous apophyses on end of 

 gullet, and three equal, separate rods in each row of thickenings, besides a large 

 comma. Eggs spherical, spiny, about 83m in diameter without the spines, 105m over 

 the spines ; spines with bulbose bases, tapering upwards, and once, twice, or thrice 

 forked at the tips ; a circlet at the base as in M. hufelandi, Eichters. 



As remarked in the original description, this is the South Orkney representative of 

 M. hufelandi. The most obvious distinction is the dichotomous processes of the egg, 

 those of M. hufelandi ending in expansions, which may be likened to little funnels or 

 discs. There are normally three distinct rods in the pharynx, while in M. hufelandi 

 the two rods next the pharynx are normally joined, and when separate they remain 

 close together or actually in contact. 



Professor Richters has recently seen reason to believe that the rods in the pharynx 

 of M. hufelandi vary greatly, and that there may be three quite distinct ; he also finds 

 that the degree of union of the claws varies so much as to offer a complete series 

 from the V-shaped pairs of M. echinogenitus to the closely welded pairs of typical 

 M. hufelandi. 



My experience of Scottish examples has not yet confirmed Professor Richters' 

 observations on those points, but has rather led me to regard most of the structures 

 of Tardigrada as fairly constant. Species do, however, vary more in some regions than 

 in others. 



In the large numbers of examples of M. furciger examined I have never seen the 

 first two rods in the pharynx united, nor an egg spine unforked. As no typical 

 examples of M. hufelandi, nor of its egg, were found in the South Orkney collections, 

 and as all the characters of M. furciger were very constant, it seems to me that, after 



