To-day as I was opening a specimen of Lepas anatifera in order
to compare the animal with the description in Darwin's 'Monograph on the
Subclass Cirripedia,' I found in the shell of this Cirripede, a
blood-red Annelide, with a short, flat body, about half an inch long and
two lines in breadth, with twenty-five body-segments, and without
projecting setigerous tubercles or jointed cirri. The small cephalic
lobe bore four eyes and five tentacles; each body-segment had on each
side at the margin a tuft of simple setae directed obliquely upwards,
and at some distance from this, upon the ventral surface, a group of
thicker setae with a strongly uncinate bidentate apex. There was above
EACH of the lateral tufts of bristles a branchia, simple on a few of the
foremost segments, and then strongly arborescent to the end of the body.
The animal, a female filled with ova, evidently, from these characters,
belongs to the family of the Amphinomidae; the only family the members
of which, being excellent swimmers, live in the open sea.
That this animal had not strayed accidentally into the Lepas, but
appertained to it as a regular and permanent guest, is evidenced by its
considerable size in proportion to the narrow entrance of the test of
the Lepas, by the complete absence of the iridescence which usually
distinguishes the skin of free Annelides and especially of the
Amphinomidae, by the formation and position of the inferior setae, etc.
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