Proneomenia sluiteri, Hubrecht

Abstract

IN the report of the Proceedings of the Biological Section of the British Association which appeared in NATURE, vol. xxiv. p. 501, there is a slight mistake in the notice of my friend Dr. Hubrecht's paper on Proneomenia. This interesting molluse is erroneously described as “one of the valuable finds of the Challenger Expedition”. So far as I am aware, neither Proneomenia nor either of the other two genera of the Solenogastres (Neomenia, Chœtoderma) was obtained by the Challenger. The only two specimens of Proneomenia which are known to science as yet were dredged by the Dutch Arctic Expedition of 1878 (or 1879), at depths of 110 and 160 fathoms in the Barents Sea. It was not obtained by the Wilhelm Barents in 1880, but we may hope that the dredgings of this season have been more productive, for Dr. Hubrecht informs me that 1881 has been a very bad ice year, and that the Wilhelm Barents has not succeeded in penetrating so far north as she has dons in previous years. The summer has therefore been devoted to dredging operations, and valuable results may be expected. The zoological results of the Dutch Arctic Expeditions of 1878 and 1879 are being published as supplemental volumes of the Niederländische Archiv für Zoologie; and in the second of these, which is now in course of publication, will be found an elaborate memoir by Dr. Hubrecht entitled “Proneomenia sluiteri, gen. et sp. n., with Remarks upon the Anatomy and Histology of the Amphineura”.