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
The _Basis_ is often thick, with an underlying layer, largely
cancellated or honeycombed. When many specimens grow crowded
together, the basis is generally deeply cup-formed, or even
sub-cylindrical; and equals as much as four fifths of the length of
the entire shell. In such cases, in some few recent specimens, and
in all the large or even quarter-grown old tertiary specimens, but
not in the quite young fossil specimens, a structure is presented,
which I have not seen in any other Cirripede, namely, the basis (Pl.
4, fig. 2 _a_) is filled up for one third, or even for more than
half its depth, by successive, separate, calcareous, transverse
layers or septa. It would appear as if the basal cup had grown too
large for the animal's body, and so required filling up. The layers
are thin and fragile; a single layer never stretches across the
whole shell; each is irregularly mammillated or blistered, with the
convex surfaces generally directed upwards; the layers are furnished
on their under sides with little pillars and short ridges, resting
on the layers beneath; it rarely happens that the supports of one
layer lie directly over those of another, though this is sometimes
the case. In a vertical section, the mass formed by these irregular
layers has a coarsely cancellated structure. This structure, although
confined to this one Cirripede, is not so anomalous as might at first
be thought, for in most species of the genus, each time that the
circumference of the basis is added to, an excessively thin calcified
film is thrown down over its whole inner surface; and in any of these
species, if the films had been formed thicker and had rested only
on certain points, instead of over the whole underlying layer, the
cancellated structure above described would have been produced.
_Mouth_: the labrum is either destitute of teeth, or has two or three
very minute teeth. The palpi have a tuft of very long spines at their
ends. The third tooth of the mandibles is thicker and larger than
the two upper ones. The maxillæ have either a nearly straight edge,
or the inferior corner is obliquely truncated, and projects much
beyond the rest of the edge. In the _Cirri_, none of the segments are
very protuberant: in the first pair, one ramus is nearly twice as
long as the other: in the posterior pairs, the segments are not much
elongated, but each supports seven pairs of spines.
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