BE'ROE, a genus of marine animals established by Milner, belonging to the Ciliorade iicnbfphcr. Some of the species, as the common B. Pikes, are now referred to Cydippe. The species, which are gelatinous, transparent, and either oval or globular, float in the ocean, where they are 'trickly diffused. Lamarck says that they are very phosphoric, and that they shine at night like lamps suspended in the sea, their brilliancy becoming vivid in proportion to the rapidity of their motions. Their breathing is carried on by means of cilia, which extend longitudinally and at equal distances along the surface from the mouth to the inferior opening. Fabricius observed minute crustaceans in the digestive organs, and that when one of these animals was broken to pieces those pieces still continued to live and swim about, by the action of the cilia, which was still continued. The Beroes have a rotatory motion, and Bose observed that they also had another, produced by an alternate contraction and dilatation.
Messrs. Audottin and Milne Edwards have given a description of the organisatiou of the globular Bove (Beret Pates, Lam. ; Pleuro
brachia of Fleming ; Eucharis of Wren and of Do Blitinville), and Dr. Grant, in the ' Transactions of the Zoological Society,' has given an account of its structure. Cuvicr mentions it as being common in the north—whore it is said to be one of the aliments of the whale (Jlakrna)—and in the channel on the French coast. It is found very commonly on the British coasts. Dr. Grant, found it in the harbour of Sheerness, in which latter locality he says " the boatmen, who seemed to be familiar with it under the name of the spawn of the sea egg (Echines), which it somewhat resembles in its globular and ribbed form, assured me that often in hot and calm weather the water swarms with the little medus.•e in such numbers as to cover the sur face in all this part of the amtuary of the Thames. The animal has a regular oval form, with its longest diameter from the mouth to the anus, about six lines, and its breadth about four lines. The general texture of the body is quite transparent and colourless." [At:au:mix.)