OCR Text |
Show 1906.] OF SOUTHERN INDIA AND CEYLON. 653 on the label. They are all covered in places with some hard reddish substance like sealing-wax, which seems to be adventitious and to have no natural connection with them. They are yellowish in colour and plump and convex in shape. The largest is 17 mm. long and 7 broad. The dorsal surface is rather sparsely studded with large, almost clavate warts, between which are smaller ones. Near the margin all the warts are smaller and more crowded. The integuments are full of very long, thin, straight, colourless tubercles arranged in stellate patterns. The rhinophorial pockets are closed by two tubercles, the branchial pockets by 8- 10, apparently set in more than one row. The branchiae are entirely retracted, small, and badly preserved. Perhaps there are 5, in any case not many more. The head seems to be prolonged on each side into a short, blunt, tentacular process. The foot is broad without markings ; the lateral margins are thin and expanded; the anterior margin grooved, but the upper lamina apparently entire. The internal organs are too much hardened for examination, but a large free stomach was found. No labial armature was found. The radula is broken up, but perhaps the formula is about 40 x 50.0.50. The teeth are hamate, rather strongly bent, and with long bases. They seem shorter and thicker near the rhachis. No denticulate teeth were seen. This form seems clearly referable to the section Staurodoris, of which it has all the characteristics, except that the branchiae are not simply pinnate as in the typical species. St. pustulata Abraham (see especially Basedow & Hedley, Trans. Royal Soc. South Austr. vol. xxix. 1905, p. 151) from Australia seems allied, but is probably specifically distinct. As I have indicated elsewhere, I think that both Staurodoris and Archidoris should be regarded as subgenera of the old Linnaean genus Doris. A rchidoris vio lac ea Bergh. (Bergh in Semper's Reisen, Bd. ix. Th. vi. Lief, i., January 1904. Cf. Eliot, on Archidoris africana, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1903, ii. p. 361 : published April 1, 1904.) Through the kindness of Mr, Suter, I have been able to examine some specimens of this form from Auckland, and think they are identical with my A. africana, the description of which was published a few months later. The difference of habitat is considerable, but the nudibranchiate fauna of New Zealand includes tropical elements like Chromodoris and Doridopsis. The chief differences between the African and New Zealand specimens are that the former have large tentacles and a number of small tubercles (probably glandular) scattered over the under side of the mantle-margin. Similar tubercles are found in other East-African forms, and are perhaps not a specific character. |