POLYCMTA—BENHAM. 
59 
The dorsal surface of the head and neck is pale brown; the rest of the body is of 
the same tint, with darker brown markings at the base of each parapod, both above and 
below; at irregular intervals along the body this deeper tint extends further over the 
surface, both dorsally and ventrally, forming larger and smaller areas, which nearly 
meet on the dorsal surface. 
The male is imperfect, consisting of head and 56 segments, with a length of 
65 mm. As Gravier has pointed out, the glands below the parapods are much better 
developed than in the female, and I note a series of segmental white marks along the 
median ventral line which are better developed in the hinder part of the fragment than 
anteriorly. These are not present in the female. 
The anatomy of the worm agrees both with the account given by Willey and 
the more complete one by Gravier, except that the latter states that the colour of the 
specimens gathered by the French expedition, when alive was “ vert jaunatre,” and 
that the spots were “ vert epinard fonce.” 
There is, however, one important difference between these two accounts. Willey 
found, contrary to McIntosh’s statement, that the bristles are “ articulated,” though 
he found it difficult to detect the articulations, till the bunch of chaetse was “ sp .ead 
out.” Gravier, on the other hand, insists that they are “ entire,” and consequently 
expresses doubts as to the identity of Willey’s specimens with that described by 
McIntosh and by himself. He enumerates three points of difference—namely, (1) in 
regard to the cliaetse; (2) in regard to the absence in Willey’s account of any description 
of the dorsal surface of the head; and (3), in regard to the papillaj at the entrance to the 
pharynx. 
I will offer remarks on each of these points, and hope to clear up the doubts 
expressed by him. 
(1) For some time I was unable to detect any articulation in the chaetse. I 
followed Willey’s advice to “ spread them out,” but failed at first to see any sign of 
jointing, even under high power. But chancing to shift the mirror of the microscope 
so that the light was no longer fully reflected, I noted an extremely faint and very 
oblique line crossing the very delicate and transparent bristles. This “ jointing ” is so 
unlike what one would expect from Willey’s figure, the reproduction of which is coarse; 
it is so unlike the articulation that occurs, for instance, in Halodora, that it is easily 
overlooked. When viewed from the side the articulation, if one may call it so, has the 
appearance of a very oblique interruption in the chaetal substance, which does not 
seem to reach the edges in all cases; but most of the appendices have the appearance 
of being “ spliced ” to the shaft, that is, it and the shaft are obliquely cut across 
(fig. 62). Occasionally, one finds a chaeta lying in a different plane, and the splicing 
appears to be more perfect and definite, where the distal appendix has its base sliced 
off on both sides to a point, and this fits into a Y-shaped cut at the end of the shaft 
(% 63). 
