﻿April, 1857.] 



ELLIOTT SOCIETY. 



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peripheral tube is a simple anastomosis. In none of the Tubula- 

 rian genera, on the other hand, is there any sinus in the length of 

 the radiate tubes , but often there is a large sinus at the junc- 

 tion of these tubes with the marginal one. With regard to the 

 position of the sexual glands, it varies, I think, in both groups, 

 from immediate connection with the digestive cavity, to a position 

 somewhere along the length of the radiate tubes.* But among 

 the genera which I think referable to the Tubularian group, there 

 are only two instances of such connection, the most remarkable 

 being that of Slabberia, (Forbes ;) and another, Nemopsis, (Agass.) 

 in which latter the generative glands are connected at once with 

 the digestive trunk and the radiate tubes. While among the 

 Campanularians our only instance is Staurophora, which is evi- 

 dently again related to the arrangement which takes place among 

 the Aeginidce. It is evident, therefore, that according to this ar- 

 rangement, one of these positions of the sexual organs is in a 

 general manner characteristic of the first of these groups, and the 

 other of the second. Coming now to the vailed rim of the bell, 

 we find it, in my view, quite characteristic in each of the groups. 

 In the whole of the second, or Campanularian group, it is quite 

 complicated, and we have the lash of the tentaculum usually sim- 

 ple, or only complicated by buttons of thread-cells as in the Cam- 

 panularian polyps. The reverse is the case in the Tubularian 

 group, where the rim of the bell is comparatively simple, so far 

 as the variety of its appendages is concerned, though decidedly 

 specialized in some genera, as Hippocrene, and on the contrary 

 the lash of the tentaculum exhibits a decided tendency to special- 

 ization and complexity, as in Nemopsis, Cladonema, Zanclea, 

 Slabberia, Dipurena, Corynitis, &c. When, on the other hand, 

 the tentaculum is at all complicated in the Campanularian series, 

 it is usually the basal portion of it, or what is called its bulb,f 

 which in Eucheilota has even two small lateral tentacula of a dif- 

 ferent type; and, indeed, in this genus, sometimes these bulbs are 



*In the singular genus Aglaura,. which is referable to the Sertularian group, the 

 sexual glands have a peculiar position. The chamber -which exists to some extent 

 in nearly all of this order, just above the digestive cavity, and towards which 

 the radiate tubes converge, is here lengthened into a delicate pedicle, at the ex- 

 tremity of which is the digestive cavity of Thaumantioid type — and just above 

 this point are the generative organs in the form of diverticula from the delicate 

 pedicle. See Gegenbaur's paper, Zeits. f. Wissen. Zool. B. S. ht. 2, pi. viii, fig. 13. 



tHowever, in Liriope of this series, the tentacula are somewhat specialized 

 into two sorts. 



