The region in which the same lamella lies is indicated in the surface
view of the top of the bell of Charybdea (Fig. 2) by the bent line _hvl_
in each quadrant. The figure manifests the appropriateness of Claus’s
name for the horizontal lamella--“bogenförmige Verwachsungs-Streifen.”
Haeckel calls the same structures “Pylorus-Klappen,” and in his account
of Charybdea Murrayana in the Challenger Report, speaking of the three
divisions of the stomach (buccal, central and basal) which he traces
upwards from the stalked forms of Scyphomedusæ, he says: “The central
stomach in this Charybdea, as in most Charybdea, is joined to the basal
stomach, as the pyloric stricture between the two is not developed and
only faintly indicated by the slightly projecting pyloric valves.”
Again, in speaking of the valves of the gastric ostia, he says: “These
four perradial ‘pouch valves’ alternate with the interradial pyloric
valves.” It is difficult to understand, however, how the “bogenförmige
Verwachsungs-Streifen” of Claus, which are undoubtedly the same
structures as those which I have called the horizontal lamellæ, and are
only strips of endodermal fusion, can be “projecting pyloric valves,” or
indeed can properly be spoken of as valves at all. Possibly Haeckel was
not quite able to understand Claus’s description, and in his desire to
find something in the stomach of Charybdea which would serve to set off a
central from a basal part, such as is found in the Lucernaridæ, hit upon
Claus’s “Verwachsungs-Streifen.” I have elsewhere given it as my opinion
that in such of the Cubomedusæ as I have studied there is no structure in
evidence that would properly serve to mark a limit between a basal and a
central portion of the stomach.
We have next to describe the marginal system. The vascular lamellæ
mentioned above in every case connected endoderm of one cavity with
endoderm of another; those of the margin have the noteworthy difference
that they run from endoderms of some part of the gastro-vascular system
to _ectoderm of the surface_. The outermost cells of the endodermal
lamellæ make direct connection with the ectodermal cells, without the
usual intervention of a layer of gelatine.
The marginal lamella of Charybdea lies, as the name implies, just on the
bell margin where the edge is curving round into the velarium. All around
the whole circumference of the bell it is found (in Charybdea) at this
same horizontal bend, except in the eight principal radii, where the
tentacles and the sensory clubs have brought about modifications. In any
place except these a vertical section through the margin will show the
marginal lamella connecting the endoderm of the marginal pocket with the
ectoderms of the surface, as represented by _vlm_ in Fig. 38, which is a
vertical section through the sensory niche a little to one side of the
perradial axis.
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