﻿Dec, 1856.] 



ELLIOTT SOCIETY. 



59 



border or rim of the bell, which is somewhat thickened, but I 

 cannot say that I have seen anything- which I could consider a 

 nervous thread. The tentacula, which are about one hundred in 

 number, being sometimes a few more or less, according to the size 

 of the specimen, are inserted into this thickened rim, each by a 

 conical radix, and they have each a basal bulb or thickened portion 

 which strongly resembles that portion of the tentacle in Thauman- 

 tias and the allied genera. It is composed of an outer envelope, 

 which when viewed in profile, appears as two thickened crura sur- 

 rounding a darker nucleus in which I have discovered no otoli hes. 

 This bulb may be elongated so as to seem merely a thicker po] ; on 

 of the tentacle, and at its extremity, on its inner side near the 

 origin of the lash, bears an ocellus composed of many pigment 

 spots. See fig. 9. The lash of the tentaculum has been already 

 described, it is capable of being so much contracted that, at times, 

 1 have lost sight of it altogether, as represented in fig. 8, when the 

 whole organ appears as a bulb with an ocellus at tip. The lashes, 

 though transparent, when seen under a low power and by a reflected 

 light, have a slight purplish tint, the terminal club being touched 

 with red. They are capable of being stretched considerably more 

 than the diameter of the disk, and are, in swimming, either curled 

 up tightly or slightly so, as represented in no-. 1. or extended to 

 the utmost, some horizontally and some directed u; wards, a few 

 perhaps obliquely downwards, the object apparently be no to have 

 the ocelli of the greater number of tentacula turned outwards. 



Immediately from the tentaculated rim, stretches inward a deli- 

 cate veil of medium width, which is, as usual, of filmy transpa- 

 rency, and appears to be highly contractile in ail directions. 



Returning now to the vertical tubes, we find that before entering 

 the tissues of the bell they traverse the clear j orticn of the pro- 

 boscis. Here they do not preserve the even somewhat flattened 

 form, which they have in the disk, but assume a rather irregular 

 outline. This appears to be due to the circumstance, that the canal 

 occupies the somewhat irregular cavity left between the juxtaposed 

 ends of the large cells composing the transparent part of the pro- 

 boscis. How these cells are arranged radiately, around each tube, 

 is shown in a diagrammatic cross-section at fig. 7. A smail 

 quadrangular space, also mentioned by Gosse in Oceanic pv.siUa, 

 is left between the four masses thus formed, which is, probably, 

 filled with the same clear substance which fills the cells. The 

 tissue so formed is not confined to the tubes, though it has there 



