(actis, a ray, and cyclos)
Valve circular or elliptical; surface flat at the centre, sloping toward the border. Central space usually evident, rounded or irregular. Markings rounded, granular, punctiform, in radial, or nearly radial, rows, sometimes fasciculate. A nodule, more or less evident, is found near the border which is usually striate.
Chromatophores round discs or granules.
ANALYSIS OF SPECIES
| Valve circular, rows radial, hyaline lines at the border | barkleyi |
| Valve circular, rows fasciculate | moniliformis |
| Valve elliptical | ellipticus |
The nodule is generally supposed to be a thickening of the cell-wall, and, in the opinion of Rattray, a projection outward, but "whether there may not be at the same time a slight inward protuberance is difficult to determine," though, as a rule, he seems to "think there is not."
ACTINOCYCLUS BARKLEYI VAR. AGGREGATA RATTR.
Surface flat from centre to semi-radius. Central space irregular, sometimes with a few scattered granules. Markings round with central dots distinct, about 7 at the centre, decreasing in straight radial rows to 12 in 10 µ at the border, where they form moniliform striæ. Border narrow with striæ about 16 in 10 µ. Hyaline interspaces at the origin of the shorter rows, but not at equal intervals. At the border, linear hyaline spaces occur at somewhat irregular intervals between the moniliform striæ owing to the termination of certain radial rows before they reach the circumference. Nodule small, from one-seventh to one-fourth the radius from the border.
According to Rattray the distinction between A. ralfsii and A. barkleyi is partly in the absence of the zone arrangement of the hyaline spaces in the latter, and to the slight differences in the number of granules. The variety aggregata differs from the type form of barkleyi mainly in the distance of the nodule from the border. I have specimens from the blue clay material at Walnut St. Bridge, and from Smith's Island, in which the distance from the border in one case is, as stated above, quite different from that in the other. In specimens from Morris Cove, Conn., the locality referred to by Rattray, variations occur.
Blue clay.