﻿306 



Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Aequorea norvegica, Browne. 



'ij^quoria'^ vitrina, Strethill "Wright, Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Ed., vol. ii. 

 (1863), p. 316. 



In January last Prof. E. A. Schafer found an Aequorea on 

 the beach at North Berwick, and to-day (21st December) 

 one of us (W. E.) had the good fortune to see eleven, seven 

 of which he captured, swimming near the surface of the 

 water at the mouth of Burntisland Harbour. The North 

 Berwick example, of which Prof Schafer has kindly shown 

 us a portion he preserved, would have a diameter of 4 to 4| 

 inches. Our specimens range from 3 to 7 inches.^ In one 

 of the largest and most perfect (170 mm. in width), bearing, 

 ripe gonads, the number of radial canals is 73, the marginal 

 tentacles about 450, and the oral lips 46. Another large 

 specimen has 75 canals, while a rather smaller one (155 mm.) 

 seems to have about 100. The large ribbon-like gonads are 

 of a creamy-white colour, as are also the canals and tentacles. 

 The "jelly," which is of no great thickness (one inch at the 

 centre of a large specimen), is perfectly colourless, and glass- 

 like in its transparency. 



^quorids — the giants among Leptomedusae — are occasion- 

 ally met with on the south and west coasts of our islands ; 

 but, with the probable exception of Strethill Wright's speci- 

 mens, we are not aware of any previous record for the east 

 coast of Scotland. 



In the 1st vol. of the Wernerian Society's Memoirs (1811, 

 p. 558), " Medusa cequorea " is mentioned by Prof. Jameson 

 as an inhabitant of the Orkney and Shetland seas. In 

 August 1850, Edward Forbes ^ observed a number of indi- 

 viduals of an Aequorea^ for which he adopted the name of 

 uE. forshalea, Peron, in the Minch, between Skye and the 

 Outer Hebrides. Some years later, namely in 1861, in a 

 paper on the reproduction of Aequorea, the following state- 

 ment was made {I.e.) by Strethill Wright : — " In the beginning 

 of this month (Nov.) Mr Eulton sent me two living speci- 

 mens of JSquoria vitrina, one about three inches in diameter, 



1 This is the spelling used by Wright throughout his paper. 



2 The diameters are approximately 3, 4, 4|, 54, 6^, 6^, and 7 inches. 



3 Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., vol. xix. (1851), p. 272. 



