166 



Proceedings of the 



The alimentary system consisted, as in Plumatella, of a mouth placed 

 within the tentacular cup, and closed by a semilunar lip or valve. The 

 mouth opened into a long tube or gullet, which passed down the axis of 

 the body and disappeared within the cell of the animal. The alimentary 

 canal probably communicated there with a stomach, and then returned 

 upwards to the mouth of the cell, where it again became visible as a thin 

 membranous tube passing up the body, and terminating, as in Plumatella, 

 in an anal orifice, situated immediately beneath the tentacular crown on 

 its concave aspect. The mouth was generally in constant motion ; and 

 when the animal was undisturbed, ciliary action and the passage of nu- 

 tritive matter were detected within the interior of the gullet, while the 

 ejection of the peculiar fusiform faeces, whi h formed so striking a feature 

 in the economy of Plumatella, was frequently observed to take place from 

 the anal orifice. 



The vascular system consisted, as far as could be seen, of an artery 

 which passed up the axis of the body, in close connection with the gullet, 

 until it arrived at the tentacular cup on its concave side ; it there divided 

 at right angles into two branches, which passed within and around the 

 tentacular cup, and sent a capillary twig into each of the tentacles. These 

 capillaries had distinctly contractile walls, 

 and were loosely attached by cellular tis- 

 sue to one side only of the cavity of the 

 tentacle. (See woodcut.) 



The artery pulsated rather irregularly 

 at the rafce of about fifteen beats in the 

 minute, and at each pulsation a wave of 

 red blood (red blood globules floating in a 

 pale liquor sanguinis) passed, like a 

 railway train, along the artery and its 

 branches up into the very end of the hol- 

 low tentacles. The blood, after momen- 

 tarily resting in the capillaries of the ten- 

 tacles, was ejected from them by an un- 

 dulating contraction of the walls of those 

 vessels, and returned in a regularly-flow- 

 ing stream along the venous system. The 

 venous system was first detected as four 

 branches, viz., one from the outside, and another from the inside, of each 

 of the horns of the crescentic tentacular cup. The two branches on each 

 side immediately united, and the two vessels thus formed encircled the 

 gullet, and united to constitute a single vein, which traversed the axis of 

 the body on the side of the gullet opposite to that occupied by the artery. 

 I have stated that the blood, urged by the contractile artery, passed at 

 once into the interior of the tentacles, and sometimes such appeared to be 

 the case : but it frequently happened that the globules were observed as- 

 cending some of the tentacles at the same time that they were descending 



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oo 



£•> 7 !/'->' 



a, •wall of tentacle; & capillary- 

 containing blood-globules; ^mem- 

 brane uniting tentacles. 



