Hermia. 
Z HYDROIDA. 
Ill 
The clavate rose-red specimens I have generally found between 
tide marks, and the white ones with a long filiform stalk on dead 
shells dredged from deeper water. On the latter is undoubtedly 
founded the f< Hydra capitata alba , pedunculo ntgoso longo, cir- 
ris capitis longitudine ” of Muller ; while the former answer better 
to his H. squamata, but although at one time disposed to consider 
them distinct, I am now satisfied of their identity as species, for they 
graduate so insensibly into one another as to lose even the character 
of fixed varieties. I am also led to suspect that the H. brevicornis 
and minuticornis of Muller, Zool. Dan. prod. p. 230, will be found 
to be modifications of this species. 
The Hydra Tuba of Sir J. G. Daly ell probably belongs to this 
genus, and may be distinguished by its tentacula being much longer 
than the body. It inhabits the Frith of Forth near Edinburgh, where 
its natural abode seems the internal concavity of the upper oyster- 
shell. It extends “ about two inches in whole, with its long white 
tentacula waving like a beautiful silken pencil in the water. It pro- 
pagates by an external shapeless bud issuing from the side of the pa- 
rent, and withdrawing, though very long connected by a ligament, 
on approaching maturity. In thirteen months a single specimen had 
eighty-three descendants. Singular and distorted forms appear from 
the successive and irregular evolution of the buds, during subsistence 
of the connecting ligament. 1 ' Edin. New Phil. Journ. xvii. 411 ; 
xxi. 92. and Rep. Brit. Assoc, an. 1834, p. 599. 
3. Hermia,* Johnston. 
Character. — Polype fixed , sheathed, in a thin horny mem- 
brane , clavate or branched and subphytoidal , the apices of the 
branches clubbed and furnished with scattered glandular tentacu- 
la : mouth 0. 
1. H. Glandulosa, irregularly or dichotomously branched ; 
* I found the name in Shakspeare ; 
“ What wicked and dissembling glasse of mine, 
“ Made me compare with Hermia' s sphery eyne.” 
When I defined this genus in the Mag. Zool. and Bot. V. ii. p. 326, I was not 
aware that the same had been instituted by Sars under the name of Stipula, and 
by Ehrenberg who called it Syncoryne. The latter designation is in direct oppo- 
sition to the Linnaean axiom — “ generic names, derived from others by the ad- 
dition of a syllable, are disapproved — and Sars’ name seems to me even more 
inadmissible, since it is a descriptive term in Botany. The fancy that the glands 
which surround the heads were the guardians of the animal, — its “ sphery eyne” 
— suggested the name here adopted. 
