Page:Scientific results HMS Challenger vol 18 part 2.djvu/870

1746 but are in loose contact in the equatorial plane; here the free edges of both valves catch into one another by means of free ramules (Pl. 128, figs. 1, 7). This loose connection is similar to what occurs in the Conchopsida (or in the Concharida with dentate edges), but never so regular. The special form of the polyhedral lattice-mantle depends on the number, arrangement, and development of the styles, which proceed over its surface; it preserves the polyhedral form of the calymma, on the surface of which it is deposed.

The characteristic styles of the Cœlographida (which are never found in the preceding Cœlodendrida) are longer hollow tubes, symmetrically disposed on both valves. They are prominent over the surface of the fork-thicket in the Cœlotholida, of the lattice-mantle in the Cœloplegmida. They bear in these latter a peculiar terminal coronet on their distal end, whilst in the former this end is armed with large pencils of spathillæ. The styles may be forked once or twice at their base, but in their greatest part they are verticillate, and not dichotomously branched like the brushes. The lateral branches of the styles are usually very numerous and regularly cruciate in alternating opposite pairs. In the odd nasal style, e.g., the first and third pairs of opposite lateral branches usually lie in the frontal plane, the second and fourth in the sagittal plane, perpendicular to the former, and so on. A similar regular disposition of the lateral branches is found also in other styles, but not in all. There are certain styles in which the lateral branches are not opposite in pairs, but alternate or verticillate, and others in which they represent unequal branches of forks, so that each single segment of the branched style represents the stouter branch of a fork, and the appertaining lateral branch the thinner branch of the fork. Further accurate examinations are required to recognise the different laws of the ramification of the styles in the different forms of Cœlographida. The lateral branches of the styles are usually again dichotomously branched inside the lattice-mantle, and their distal ends pass over into its network. But the verticillate or cruciate branches, which arise from the free part of the styles outside the lattice-mantle, are always armed with the same elegant pencils of spathillæ which cover the surface of the fork-thicket in the Cœlotholida, the surface of the lattice-mantle in the Cœloplegmida. These pencils also are often regularly opposite in pairs, and the pairs alternate in two planes perpendicular one to another (Pl. 128, figs. 1, 4).

The terminal coronets are peculiar ornaments which protect the distal ends of the styles in the Cœloplegmida, whilst in the Cœlotholida these are armed with the usual pencils of spathillæ (Pl. 122, fig. 8). Each coronet is usually produced by the double, triple, or quadruple furcation of the free distal end of the style; therefore composed of four, eight, or sixteen terminal branches, which, on account of their peculiar form and function, we may call "fingers." More rarely the ramification of the coronets is more or less irregular, and sometimes the number of the fingers exceeds twenty or even thirty.

In the majority of species eight fingers are regularly disposed (Pl. 127, figs. 1-3; Pl. 128, figs. 1-8). Often too sixteen occur, rarely four only. Sometimes the fingers