three-fourths that of the whole jelly-sphere. Nucleus profusely branched or papillated, its spherical surface covered with numerous (more than a hundred) finger-shaped obtuse blind sacs, about as long as its radius. Protoplasm of the central capsule forming a loose network between the large roundish alveoles, in the cortical zone radially striped and containing one layer of large dark oil-globules. These are regularly distributed on the inside of the capsule-membrane and separated by intervals, twice as broad as its diameter, giving to the capsule-surface a spotted appearance. Extracapsular jelly-envelope thin, yellowish, with very numerous and small xanthellæ.
Dimensions.—Diameter of the whole jelly-sphere 5 mm., of the central capsule 4 mm., of the nucleus 1.3 mm.
Habitat.—Antarctic Ocean, Station 154 (south of Kerguelen), surface.
Genus 4. Thalassicolla,[1] Huxley, 1851, Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 2, vol. viii. p. 433.
Definition.—Thalassicollida without intracapsular alveoles, but with large roundish or globular alveoles within the extracapsular calymma. Nucleus in the centre of the capsule simple spherical, not branched.
The genus Thalassicolla was proposed by Huxley in 1851, for a certain number of different voluminous jelly-like Radiolaria, which he had observed living during his voyage in the "Rattlesnake" through the tropical seas, and of which he gives an excellent description—the first accurate observations on living Radiolaria. Johannes Müller afterwards removed from this genus the social genera Sphærozoum and Collosphæra (formerly Thalassicolla punctata), and retained as type of the genus Thalassicolla nucleata. In 1862 in my Monograph I added two other species, Thalassicolla pelagica and Thalassicolla zanclea, and later (1870) Thalassicolla sanguinolenta. Now I think it better to separate the last two species as a new genus, Thalassophysa, characterised by the papillate or branched nucleus, and to retain in Thalassicolla only those forms with simple spherical nucleus. For both genera the extracapsular, voluminous, spherical calymma or jelly-envelope, with numerous large alveoles, is characteristic. The membrane of the central capsule in Thalassicolla is now structureless (subgenus Thalassicollarium, with three species), now characterised by a peculiar structure, prominent ridges on the inside of the membrane, which form a network with polygonal plates, resembling an epithelium (Pl. 1, fig. 5b; subgenus Thalassicollidium, with four species). Of the seven species here described, two are cosmopolitan, widely distributed, and common; one is Mediterranean, one Atlantic, and three Pacific.
Subgenus 1. Thalassicollarium, Haeckel.
Definition.—Membrane of the central capsule structureless, only perforated by innumerable very small radial pores.
- ↑ Thalassicolla = Sea-jelly, θάλασσα, κόλλα.
