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 soft, rounded, bag-like portion of the body, which I have called
the prosoma, is usually separated by a notch from the five posterior
thoracic segments; at its upper end it may be said to carry the mouth
and first pair of cirri. The prosoma includes the main part of the
stomach and the broad ends of the vesiculæ seminales. It is always
clothed by very thin membrane, which in _Chthamalus dentatus_, is
hairy. In Tubicinella and Xenobalanus, the prosoma is much elongated,
being produced far down the deep sack. That the prosoma is mainly
formed by a great development of that segment (homologically the second
thoracic segment) which carries the first pair of cirri, is certain,
and I should not have hesitated to have said that it was exclusively
so formed, had not the first thoracic segment in the anomalous genus
Cryptophialus been developed as a distinct and free segment, not
attached to the carapace; showing that possibly in other Cirripedes,
the dorsal half of this first thoracic segment may be concerned in the
formation of the free prosoma.
_Muscular System._
_Attachment of the Body to the Shell._--The prosoma which carries the
posterior thoracic segments, and in appearance the mouth, is the only
part of the body which is attached to the general covering (Pl. 25,
fig. 1), namely, to the opercular valves. Except through the continuity
of the lining membranes of the sack, the body lies free within the
walls of the shell. The area of attachment (shown by a sinuous broken
line round _a_ and _b_) extends from about the middle of the two scuta
down to their basal margins. As these valves lie obliquely across the
orifice of the shell, the animal's body comes to be suspended almost
in the middle of the sack. The two scuta, as we have seen, have the
power of opening and shutting a little; and are brought together by
the adductor scutorum muscle (_a_), which is generally very powerful.
The body is attached to these valves, round and beneath the adductor,
so as to hide it until one of the valves be removed. The attachment
is chiefly effected by three pairs of widely expanded, superficial
muscles, two pairs of which are spread over the flanks of the prosoma,
and the third pair over its rounded (properly dorsal) surface, which
lies close to the rostral compartment (A, fig. 1) of the shell. I
should have stated, that my chief examination of the attachment of
the body to the scutal valves, has been made on _Coronula balænaris_,
and less closely on _Balanus tintinnabulum_. Within these three pairs
of superficial muscles, there are (besides the adductor) no less than
five other pairs; of these one long pair is attached at one end to
the basal margin of the labrum (_e_), and at the other end, to the
under side, near to the basal margin of the scuta: two other, shorter,
parallel pairs of muscles are attached at one end to the interspace of
membrane between the basal edge of the labrum and the adductor scutorum
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