Page:The aquarium - an unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.djvu/284

Rh triangular scaly spines, somewhat imbricate, the points of which are blunt, and are recurved. The resemblance borne by this organ to the proboscis in the parasitic Entozoa and Epizoa, is remarkable, and not only shows the affinity of the Syrinx to the vermiform classes, but suggests some analogy of purpose to which the spines are subservient. What the nature of the food is in the Syrinx, and what is the mode in which it is procured, I have no knowledge. I believe the subject is still in tenebris; but the stomach is said to be always filled with sand and minnute [sic] fragments of shells, between the swallowing of which and an elaborate prehensile array of recurved hooks, I certainly can imagine no connexion. The whole spinous surface of the proboscis is much more brilliantly iridescent than the body. The termination of this organ is said to be furnished with a circle of short digitate tentacles; but as the animal did not evert the proboscis to the full extent while I had it alive, I had no opportunity of observing these.

At a little more than an inch below the commencement of the proboscis there is a small tubercle, which I at first took for a wound, through which the intestine was protruding; but I believe it is the natural orifice of the digestive canal, which is said to be of great length, extending to the extremity of the body, and then turned on itself till it reaches this tubercle in its reverted course.

The animal was inert, scarcely moving, except when touched, and died after I had had it about a week.