THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
this Spirula,^ ol'tcu reproduced, but this precious specimen disappeared without having 
been further studied.* 
'Hu- Euglisli E.xpedition to the Congo procured a fragment of Spirula (the posterior 
e.xtn inity with the .‘^liell), which was deposited in the British Museum.® In 1836, several 
Spirulu , not so complete as that of Perron, were taken by the French corvette “ La 
Keclicivlie,”^ upon the most perfect of which the first anatomical sketch of the genus, 
by lie Blainville, was based ;® he recognised especially the existence of a single pair 
of gill.'.. Tlie first work of Owen® does not add much to the discoveries of de Blainville, 
Ins ol •■'Nervations being likewise exclusively based on fragments. 
A .'Ningle specimen almost entirely intact had been collected at this time ; it had already 
liceii tiiTured by Gray ' and by Reeve,® but it was only at a relatively recent period that 
the collector to whom it belonged would permit Owen to study its organisation. His 
memoir’ is then the first description of a complete Spirula. Unfortunately, there are, 
in the text as well as in the illustrations of this work, not only a considerable number 
of important gaps, but a regrettable absence of even approximate precision, which render 
the re.'Nults much less important than we would have expected, all the more so, as in the 
work there is a complete absence of the present ideas, tendencies, and pre-occupations of 
Zoology. This memoir has, however, remained the only one containing an anatomical 
dr.-'cription of a complete individual, for if Owen had the exceptional good fortune of 
dissecting a second complete Sp)irula (male), his observations were limited to making 
known, with as little precision, the sexual characters.*® 
not her complete individual was collected in 1865 near Port Jackson, but it was 
'■ Knycinet, Voyage do dOcouvertes aux terres au.strales, pi. xxx. fig. 4, Paris, 1816. 
' “ Malbeurcusoment le seul et pn5cieux specimen qu’ils rapporterent conserve dans la liqueur, et trouvd 
mort ct floltant en mer, s’est perdu au Museum, oil ils I’avaient dispose, avant meme qu’une bonne description 
pul iHJUa consoler de cette perte ” (F6russac et d’Orbigny, Histoire naturelle des Cephalopodes aci^tabulif^res, 
p. ."li, Paris, 1848). 
’ Gray. Catalogue of the Mollusca in the British Museum, Part I., Cephalopoda antepedia, 1849, p. 116. 
* lA-Un- do M. Robert sur les Spirules, sur le lamentin du S^nijgal et sur I’existence dans cette region de 
I'A/riquc d«' ITiyi-ne tachetee (Comptes rendw Arad. Sci. PariK, t. ii., 1836, pp. 362, 363 ; id., in Ann. Sci. nai. 
iK-r. 2, t. V. pp. 226, 227, 1836). 
' I>e Blainville, (,|uelqucs observations sur I’Anatomie de la Spirula et sur I’usage du siphon des coquilles 
[Mtlylhalaim-ii ( Arm. /ranc. ri itranj. (VAnat. et de Phys., t. i., 1837, pp. 369-382). 
* Description of two mutilated specimens of Si/imla peronii, with some observations on S. amtralis 
anil N. rr/i>«/<j/a (Zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. “ Samarang,” Mollusca, part i. pp. 6-17, pi. iv., 1848). 
' Gray. Un the Animal of SpiruLa {Ann. May. Nat. Hist., scr. 1, vol. xv., 1845, pp. 257-260, pi. xv.). 
* Elements of Conchologj', 1846, pj. 16, pi. A, figs. a-/. 
* Owen, Suppilemcntary Observations on the Anatomy of Spirula australis, Lamarck (Ann. May. Nat. Hist., 
aer. 5, vol. iti., 1879, pp. 1-16, pis. i.-iii.). 
*• Owen, On the External and Structural Characters of the Male Spirula australis, Lam. {Pror.. Zool. Soc. 
I^mrian, 1 ^- 0 , p. 350 , pL xxxii. ). Owen reports that this specimen was taken during the voyage of the “ Bonite.” 
Hoalryt I, however, who w.u on Ijoard this ship, says expressly that they had not succeeded in capturing a Spirula 
(Voyage sut--tir du mondc . . . sur la corvette la “ Bonite,” Zoologie, t. ii. p. 8, 1852). 
