of the Royal Physical Society. 341 



Park, near Edinburgh, a specimen of Plumularia falcata, on 

 which grew a coryneform zoophyte belonging to the genus 

 Stauridia. The polyps were very long and cylindrical, and 

 furnished with twelve capitate tentacles, arranged in three 

 whorls, and also with a fourth whorl of filiform tentacles, situ- 

 ated at a considerable interval beneath the third whorl, as shown 

 in fig. 7. The filiform tentacles were held, not at right angles 

 as in Dujardin's species, but at an acute angle with the body 

 of the polyp. 



The globular tips of the upper tentacles exceeded in size 

 those of any of the Corynes with which I am acquainted, and 

 contained many -barbed thread-cells (fig. 9), half a diameter 

 larger than similar cells in C. pusilla. When first found, the 

 smooth polyp-stems sprung singly from a creeping fibre ; but 

 after a few weeks of plentiful entomostracean diet, they be- 

 came irregularly branched, as in Gosse's figure of Coryne 

 stauridia. 



I have named this species Stauridia producta. 



S. producta. — Polyps much elongated^ cylindrical (red- 

 dish) ; capitate tentacles in two or three whorls ; filiform ten- 

 tacles semi-erect. 



Dujardin has described, in his Stauridie, the production of 

 medusoids whose strange form and precautions for the safety 

 of their ova are well worthy of note. I anxiously watched 

 my Stauridia for many weeks, but it gradually died away, 

 " without issue." 



The tentacles of Coryne and Stauridia are not hollow, but 

 contain a core or central chain of endodermic cells, placed in 

 single series (as at c, fig. 8). The contents of each of these 

 cells consist of highly vacuolated sarcode, which includes a 

 nucleus, accompanied by a few coloured granules, the func- 

 tion of which has not been determined. The ectoderm of the 

 tentacle b is not generally vacuolated ; it contains minute 

 soft corpuscles (woodcut, fig. 2), from each of which projects 

 externally a long and finely-acuminated spine or palpocil. 

 These spines are also found scattered over the whole body of 

 the polyp, unconnected with thread-cells, and are, I am led to 

 believe, instruments of sense (touch 1). The head of the ten- 

 tacle a is covered with short thick palpocils, which I have 



