A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 2 of 2): The Balanidæ, (or Sessile Cirripedes); the Verrucidæ, etc., etc.Darwin, Charles
Science
A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 2 of 2): The Balanidæ, (or Sessile Cirripedes); the Verrucidæ, etc., etc.
Darwin, Charles
Balanidae; Cirripedia
_Mouth_, _thorax_, _limbs_, _abdomen_.--I have nothing to add regarding
the mouth, except to confirm my former account; viz., that it is
functionless, consisting merely of crests, which project inwardly
between the gnathites of the young Cirripede, and of a shrivelled
closed tube representing the œsophagus. In fact the mouth is a model
of the outside of the mouth of the young Cirripede. I may remark that
some little way beneath the membrane answering to the labrum, a pair
of ligamentous apodemes, the use of which I do not know, slightly
penetrate the body. The degree of prominence of the mouth varies, but
it is far less than in the mature animal. On the limbs I have nothing
particular to add: the drawing of the first pair of legs (Pl. 30, fig.
5) is, I think, very accurate: I observed all the spines here figured,
on the corresponding leg of the pupa of _Balanus Hameri_. The five
posterior pairs of legs differ only in the outer ramus having five
plumose spines, instead of four, and one short simple spine at the
exterior angle, making six altogether. The legs, in their natural
position (fig. 2), have only the terminal segments of their two rami
directed posteriorly; and as a consequence the spine (close to _i_
in fig. 5), borne on the penultimate segment of the outer ramus, is
directed in the same line with that segment and with the pedicel,
namely, anteriorly, and at right angles to the natatory plumose spines.
This short spine acts, I imagine, as a defensive weapon; it has been
omitted in fig. 2. Of the thorax I need not give, from my notes, any
more details. The abdomen (fig. 6) is similarly constructed, as far as
I have seen, throughout the order, with the exception of Alcippe (Pl.
23, fig. 17), in which it is composed of only one segment instead of
three. In this genus the caudal appendages likewise consist of only one
segment, with very short spines. In the pupa of _Balanus balanoides_,
the three spines borne on each caudal appendage are very much more
unequal in size than in the pupa of _Lepas australis_, although in the
latter (fig. 6) the inner spine is considerably thicker than the two
outer. Whether the three segments of which the abdomen is composed, are
the three anterior or three posterior, of the normal seven segments,
I know not: on the view that they are the three posterior segments, I
presume, according to analogy, that the caudal appendages are borne on
the penultimate segment, and that the ultimate segment is here quite
aborted.
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