OCR Text |
Show 1897.] NON-MARINE F A U N A OF SPITSBERGEN. 797 13. CALLIDINA PUSILLA, Bryce. Some individuals with a very large jelly-like case, mostly whitish but sometimes tinged with brown, seemed structurally to be inseparable from the above species, the type form of which, as repeatedly found in England, constructs a very small and meagre tube. My correspondent Forstmeister L. Bilfinger mentioned to m e some years back that he had found a variety with a large case and had provisionally named it " textrix" a name which may well be adopted for it as rather more than usually appropriate. The case was flask-shaped, sometimes flattened on the ventral side, nearly twice as long as the feeding rotifer, and swelling up above and behind the trunk. The young individual will sometimes settle down on the side of another case, and thus several may come to form a single mass. 14. CALLIDINA CORNIGERA, Bryce. Many species of Callidina so closely resemble each other in the normal or extended position, that it is necessary for identification to isolate every doubtful specimen and wait until it is sufficiently re-assured to feed whilst under observation, for it is only in the feeding position that the most distinctive features of such forms can be seen. Many, and especially the rarer forms, are exceedingly timid, and with such it is commonly useless to look at them again for several hours after isolation. One such doubtful specimen had been thus set aside for a week before I saw it feeding, -when it showed itself to belong to this very abnormal species, which I originally described from a single specimen found at Bognor in Sussex. Some years later a second specimen was met with in moss collected in Buckinghamshire. The present is the third specimen found, and proves that the species, if rare, is at all events widely distributed. The creature lodged itself among debris and squatted in a most irregular manner, so that no sketch could be obtained. The figure already published gives a fair idea of the distinctive ' horns,' a structural peculiarity not approached by any other species yet known. W h e n extended, this specimen measured 0*347 mm., and the mastax formula was 2/2. I again found the rostral lamella? unusually large and conspicuous. 15. CALLIDINA PAPILLOSA, Thompson. Some half dozen examples. 16. CALLIDINA HABITA, Bryce. Three specimens. 17. ADINETA YAGA, Davis. A few examples of the form I (3) have named var. minor, having the face narrower than long. This form, wdiich in m y experience is the more common, is, I understand from Mr. Davis, the type as known to him. The var. major was not represented. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1897, No. LIB 52 |