Excerpt from Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy, at Harvard College: Published by Order of the Legislature of Massachusetts, North American Acalephæ

The progress of our knowledge of the Class of Acalephs is at present so closely linked with every new observation which may be brought up in the history of the development of these animals, that it has been thought advisable to extend this Catalogue somewhat, and not make it simply an enumeration of the Acalephs in the collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. It has, however, been limited to the North American species, and even many of the Sertularians, Campanularians, and Tubularians in the collection are not described or mentioned here, because our information with regard to them is too scanty to be available. The mere enumeration, with short descriptions, of Hydroids, the development of which has not been fully traced, would probably only add, in the course of a few years, synonymes to some of the Medusæ, the adult stages of which may be well known, and would not advance in the least degree our acquaintance with the North American Acalephs. To make this Catalogue useful to American students, a few species described by other authors, of which there are no specimens in the Museum collection, are added, to facilitate further investigations. This is done with the less hesitation, as it is hoped that in a short time most of the species thus enumerated will have been figured in the diagrams of the Museum.

In the descriptions of the species, constant reference has been made to the bearing of the facts discussed, on the classification of Acalephs, and consequently much has been introduced which would be out of place in a descriptive catalogue. The wood-cuts, with the exception of a few borrowed from the Contributions to the Natural History of the United States by Professor Agassiz, have all been drawn on wood from nature by myself, and, though not highly finished, will yet generally give a better idea of the Acalephs, in this simple outline, than could have been done by a more finished wood-cut.

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