THE ACTINIANS OF PORTO RICO. 
347 
So far, then, the species seems distinctly separated from any previously described, and it seems 
preferable to retain the position assumed in McMurrich’s paper. 
Family BUNODACTIM Verrill. 
Bunodidx, Gosse, 1858, 1860; et al. 
Bunodactidx, Verrill, 1899, p. 42. 
Actiniaria with a flat contractile base; column usually provided over the whole or greater part of 
its extent with vertical rows of adhesive verrucse or vesicular outgrowths, often with a capitular cycle 
modified as acrorhagi, no cinelides and acontia. Sphincter muscle endodermal and circumscribed. 
Perfect mesenteries usually numerous and strongly muscular: all may be gonophoric. 
The family Bunodactidx corresponds with the family Bunodidx of Gosse and subsequent authors. 
The change of name is due to the recognition by Verrill that Gosse’s generic term Bunodes ,was 
already preoccupied (see below). 
The family includes Actiniaria which are readily recognized by the verrucose or vesicular character 
of the column and the very pronounced circumscribed sphincter. The genus Useiotealia alone lias a 
smooth column. Both the Phyllactidx and Aliciidx are closely related with the Bunodactidx, and as 
intermediate forms are studied the three may have to be united. The Phyllactidx are separated 
mainly by the enormous development of the acrorhagi, which become strongly tubercular or lobetl on 
their upper aspect, and constitute a large proportion of the ex posed disk of the polyp. The A lididx bear 
vesicular, often pedunculated, columnar outgrowths, but the muscular development throughout is 
.much less, the sphincter being either absent or diffuse in character, while acrorhagi are usually absent. 
Genus BUNODOSOMA Verrill. 
Bunodes (pars), Gosse, 1855,1860. 
Bunodosorna, Verrill, 1899, p. 44. 
Bunodactidx in which the column is provided with vertical rows of vesicular outgrowths, which 
may be all of the same size or alternately larger and smaller, and with a cycle of simple or complex 
acrorhagi. Tentacles polycyclic. Twelve or more pairs of perfect mesenteries. 
In 1899 Professor Verrill, having discovered that Gosse’s generic term Bunodes (1855) had been 
employed a year previously by Eichwald for a genus of Eurypteroids, proceeded to subdivide into 
different genera the species which had been included under the long-established name. For forms the 
verrucse of which serve as adhesive suckers, and of which the British Bunodes verrucosa (B. gemmacea) 
is the type, he gives the name Bunodactis. Attaching supreme importance to the presence of only six 
pairs of perfect mesenteries, he erected the genus Bunodella for the Aulactinia stelloides of McMurrich 
(1889, p. 28), but in a later paper of the same series (1899, p. 146) he withdrew the genus, having 
found that in large Jamaican specimens the number of perfect mesenteries in the type species may 
reach twenty-four. For the Actinia granulifera of Lesueur, Verrill proposed the genus Bunodosorna, 
distinguishing it from Bunodactis by the fact that the verruca: do not form adhesive suckers, but are 
vesicular, and that the upper or submarginal verruca: are larger, and in mature specimens more or 
less lobulated. The two forms of verrucse appear to me well worthy of generic separation; they differ 
both histologically and physiologically. The alteration in the typical generic name made it necessary 
to effect a corresponding change in the family name, and Verrill therefore altered this from Bunodidx 
to Bunodactidx. 1 
1 Professor McMurrich, in his report on certain Puget Sound Actinians (Annals N. Y. Acad. Sci., voi. xiv, pt. 1, July, 
1901), received while the present paper was going through the press, discusses at some length the synonymy of the genera 
now under consideration. Following the strict laws of priority, McMurrich employs Ehrenberg’s (1834) subgenus Cribtina 
for the genus Bunodes of Gosse. It is only possible here to tabulate his conclusions, which are as follows: 
Cribrina, Ehr. = Bunodes Gosse, Evactis Verrill, Bunodactis Verrill, Bunodella Verrill. 
Urticina, Ehr. = Tcalia Gosse, possibly Epigonams Verrill. 
Anthopleura, Dueh. & Mich. = Aulactinia Verrill, JEgeon Gosse, Bunodosorna Verrill. 
