JOHNSON: POLYCHAETA OF PUGET SOUND REGION. 401 
great number of somites suggest such a habitat; and the stout 
dorsal seta shown in Pi. 5, Fig. 59, is such as would properly belong 
to a tube-dwelling Nereid. These setae remind one of the “hooded 
crotchets” of Nereis agassizi (PL 4, Fig. 43), which is also a tube- 
dweller, but they are in fact compound setae with a much reduced 
appendage deeply sunk within the tip of the shaft. These setae 
are not found in the most anterior parapodia, but begin about the 
40th foot. A seta of this form would be especially useful in clam¬ 
bering within the tube. These stout setae are only one or two in 
number in each foot (Figs. 54, 55, 56), and occur only in the dorsal 
ramus. There are no setae of the ordinary form in the dorsal 
ramus where these setae are present, except in two or three 
parapodia where the change is taking place (Fig. 54). 
Ehlers’s description of this species is based upon a single specimen 
collected by Alexander Agassiz in the Gulf of Georgia in 1859. 
This type, now deposited in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, 
I have had an opportunity to examine, and I find it of the same 
species as the specimens abov^e mentioned. 
None of the specimens is complete. Ehlers’s example had a 
length of 125 mm. and 179 somites ; a nearly perfect specimen in 
the Columbian collection measures 146 mm. and has 260 somites. 
It is evidently not full grown, for its greatest transverse diameter, 
including parapodia, does not exceed 3 mm., whereas Ehlers’s speci¬ 
men, which is the largest I have seen, has a diameter of 4 mm. 
Nephthydidae. 
18. Nephthys coeca (Fabricius) Orsted. 
Numerous examples from various localities — Neah Bay, Salmon 
Bay, and Pleasant Beach. The largest specimens measure 20 cm. 
and over in length, and 15 mm. across the thickest portion, including 
the parapodia. The species occurs northward along the Alaskan 
shores, in Bering Sea (Marenzeller, ’90) and along the northern 
coast of Siberia (Wiren, ’83). It extends southward along the 
California coast as far at least as San Francisco Bay, but the Cali¬ 
fornia specimens are pygmies as compared with those from Puget 
Sound and Alaska. 
The species was long ago collected by Alex. Agassiz in the Gulf 
of Georgia and identified by Elders (“Die borstenwiirmer,” p. 588) 
as identical with Nephthys coeca of European waters. I have com 
