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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN CRIMINOLOGY

Adam Dobrin

Homicide Data
Sources
An Interdisciplinary
Overview for
Researchers

123
SpringerBriefs in Criminology

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/10159

Adam Dobrin

Homicide Data Sources

An Interdisciplinary Overview
for Researchers
Adam Dobrin
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, FL, USA

ISSN 2192-8533 ISSN 2192-8541 (electronic)

SpringerBriefs in Criminology
ISBN 978-3-319-19880-4 ISBN 978-3-319-19881-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19881-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944092

Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

© The Author(s) 2016
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Printed on acid-free paper

Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media

(www.springer.com)
Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Introduction and Definitions ......................................................................... 1
Rates.............................................................................................................. 2
References ..................................................................................................... 4
2 Police Data ................................................................................................... 5
General Description ...................................................................................... 5
Jurisdiction .................................................................................................... 6
Publications and Definitions ......................................................................... 7
Collection Systems........................................................................................ 8
Summary Program .................................................................................... 8
National Incident-Based Reporting System .............................................. 11
Voluntary Reporting ...................................................................................... 12
Caveats and Concerns ................................................................................... 13
Trend Issues .............................................................................................. 13
Missing Data ............................................................................................. 14
Reporting Variability ..................................................................................... 15
References ..................................................................................................... 16
3 Public Health Data ...................................................................................... 19
General Description ...................................................................................... 19
International Classification of Diseases ........................................................ 20
Benefits and Caveat ....................................................................................... 22
Linked Birth/Infant Death Records ............................................................... 22
Comparisons to UCR .................................................................................... 25
Developments................................................................................................ 26
References ..................................................................................................... 27

v
vi Contents

4 Specialty Systems ........................................................................................ 29

Military Bases ............................................................................................... 29
Custodial Deaths ........................................................................................... 30
Arrest......................................................................................................... 31
Correctional Facilities ............................................................................... 32
Workplace Fatalities ...................................................................................... 34
References ..................................................................................................... 35
5 International ................................................................................................ 37
Introduction ................................................................................................... 37
The Interpol Crime Survey ........................................................................... 37
The United Nations Programs....................................................................... 38
Terrorism ....................................................................................................... 39
References ..................................................................................................... 41

Index ................................................................................................................... 43
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Return A Example: number of murders and nonnegligent

manslaughters per 100,000 inhabitants by metropolitan
and nonmetropolitan counties, by population group, 2013 ............. 8
Table 2.2 Supplementary Homicide Reports example:
murder circumstances by sex of victim, 2013.................................. 9
Table 2.3 Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA)
example: law enforcement officers feloniously killed,
by type of weapon, 2004–2013 ....................................................... 10
Table 2.4 Hate Crime Statistics: Offense type by bias motivation, 2013 ........ 11

Table 3.1 International Classification of Disease, 10th Revision codes

for homicides and legal interventions.............................................. 20
Table 3.2 NVSS fatality example: homicide injury deaths
and rates per 100,000, all races, both sexes, all ages, 2013.
ICD-10 Codes: X85-Y09, Y87.1,*U01-*U02 ................................. 23
Table 3.3 Variables available in the Linked Birth/Infant Death records data .. 23
Table 3.4 Linked Birth/Infant Death Records homicide data example:
deaths by race and education of mother, 2012 ................................ 24
Table 3.5 National Violent Death Reporting System example:
homicide circumstances, all mechanisms all races,
both sexes, all ages, 2012 ................................................................ 26

Table 4.1 Defense Casualty Analysis System example:

active duty military homicide and terrorist deaths by year ............. 30
Table 4.2 Deaths in Custody Reporting Program Arrest-Related
Deaths example: percent of reported arrest-related
deaths, by demographic characteristics and manner
of death, 2003–2009 ........................................................................ 32

vii
viii List of Tables

Table 4.3 Deaths in Custody Reporting Program example:

number and rate of local jail and state prison inmates
deaths, by cause of death and selected decedent
characteristics, 2000–2012 .............................................................. 33
Table 4.4 Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational
injuries example: fatal occupational injuries by selected
characteristics, 2013 ........................................................................ 35

Table 5.1 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime example:

regional homicide profiles, 2013 ..................................................... 39
Table 5.2 Global Terrorism Database example: numbers killed
by terrorism, by country, 2013 ........................................................ 40
About the Author

Adam Dobrin, Ph.D. earned his Bachelor’s degree from the College of William
and Mary in Virginia, and both his Master’s and Doctorate in Criminology from the
University of Maryland. He is on the faculty in the School of Criminology and
Criminal Justice at Florida Atlantic University as an Associate Professor. While in
graduate school, he authored the Statistical Handbook on Violence in America, and
has been exploring issues of violence ever since, focusing primarily on public health
methodologies. To further this goal, Dr. Dobrin co-founded and held positions in
two Cochrane Collaboration entities: Field Coordinator for the Cochrane Justice
Health Field (CJHF) and Assistant Director of the Cochrane College for Policy at
George Mason University. Shifting part of his research trajectory, Dr. Dobrin
recently graduated from the Indian River State College’s Public Service Education
Program and now volunteers as a road-patrol Deputy for his local Sheriff’s Office.

ix
Chapter 1
Introduction

Introduction and Definitions

A person killing another is one of the most serious of all social interactions. The
interest in killings has been a major focus of many disciplines, including law, poli-
tics, entertainment, criminal justice, criminology, and public health. The passionate
and often controversial discourse on this topic often strays from objective scientific
evidence to realms of firmly held beliefs and myths. To better understand such a
misidentified yet important topic, it is best to start with a review of the data sources
that provide a starting point for rigorous scientific discussion. This work will focus
on describing American data sources. International data sources are discussed as
well, but not those of individual other countries, only worldwide ones. Data sources
that collect for non-national areas within the United States (such specific cities) are
not covered. Tables are presented to illustrate some examples of the data the sources
provide. The focus of the book is not to discuss the meaning of the data, but rather
the availability of the information each source provides.
The focus of this work is to describe the data sources that detail interpersonal
individual-level killings. These are primarily criminal killings, although some non-
criminal events (such as self-defense) are covered by some of the data sources discussed.
Self-directed fatal violence, suicide, is not covered. Collective fatal violence, such as
warfare related deaths, is also excluded, although a brief discussion of an international
source that provides data on deaths from terrorism is included in Chap. 5.
The generic definitions of the topic covered by these data sources include:
Homicide: The killing of a person by another person. There can be multiple dece-
dents and killers, but as noted above, collective events such as warfare are not cov-
ered in this work. Homicides may be criminal or not; intentional or accidental; and
may cover deaths that occur as a result of injuries sustained from encounters that
precede death by long stretches of time.

© The Author(s) 2016 1

A. Dobrin, Homicide Data Sources, SpringerBriefs in Criminology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19881-1_1
2 1 Introduction

Justifiable homicide: This is a killing in self-defense; by police/military in the line

of duty; or a state-sanctioned execution.
Murder: A murder is a criminal homicide that incorporates a measure of intent.
There are other categories of killings covered by some of the data sources, but
these are the primary ones.
Resulting from the widespread interest in interpersonal fatal violence, there are
more sources of data available and of better quality than for any other crime. This is
not to say that they are flawless data sources, far from it in some cases. But due to
the serious nature of homicide, and the almost certain physical manifestation that it
occurred (i.e., there is a body), much effort is made to have quality data estimates.
As such, there are multiple high-quality sources available to the researcher.
Understanding where the numbers that are used to create the discussions, tables,
charts, and graphs about homicide come from will greatly expand the understanding
of what those discussions, tables, charts, and graphs really mean.

Rates

Before specific data sources can be described, a very useful analytical tool must be
presented (see Anderson & Rosenberg, 1998; Elandt-Johnson, 1975). If the con-
sumers of homicide data take only the numbers of events into account, they are
falling into a common and regrettable mistake. Numbers of events are only a part of
the picture. If one were to take two cities, say a crude estimation of New York City
in 1990 and a crude estimation of Washington, DC in 1990, which city appears to
be more dangerous? New York City had about 2250 (this is a crude rounded estima-
tion for discussion, not an accurate data point) murders and Washington, DC had
roughly 475. So it appears that New York was almost five times as murderous as
Washington, DC. Not quite. New York had a much larger population. It would be
expected to have more murders with more people available. Again, using smoothed
numbers for ease of illustration, let’s say New York had a population of 7.3 million
people, and Washington, DC had 600,000. Clearly New York was much larger than
Washington, DC (about 12 times larger). So which city was more dangerous? To
make that determination, we need to calculate a rate. Rates are an extremely power-
ful device for comparing event risks across many attributes, and will be used exten-
sively in useful discussions about homicide, so the method of calculation will be
shown soon. Again, this is a very important and useful tool, it allows for the com-
parison of areas with different-sized populations (such as New York City to
Washington, DC; Florida to Maryland; the US to Canada; etc.), or across time (a
city in 2014 as compared to 1990 as compared to 1980, and so on), across demo-
graphic groups (males compared to females; blacks compared to whites; males
above 65 to females 19–24; etc.), or across any number of situations. To only pres-
ent the numbers of events in these conditions is extremely misleading, and is flat out
incorrect given the wide range of population differences.
Rates 3

Numerically speaking, murders are rare events. Because of this, the rates
calculated are most often given per 100,000 population, although for some catego-
ries that are even more rare (such as children killed during their first year of life, see
Table 3.4), a rate per 100,000 is complex and difficult to read, so it would be pre-
sented per million. But overall, the standard format for homicide rates is per
100,000. The reason for this will be made clearer when the numerical calculations
are shown later.
To calculate a rate, three pieces of information are needed:
1. The number of events
2. The population at risk
3. The standardizing factor
The number of events will be the number of criminal homicides that occur for the
time, place, and population that we are interested in (such as all of New York City
in 1990). The population at risk is the population of concern, not the total popula-
tion. For the example we are using it is the total population of New York City in
1990, not the entire United States, or the world. It could be the population of males
above 15 in a certain neighborhood; it just depends on what data point you are inter-
ested in. And the standardizing factor is 100,000. The formula is:

Number of events
 Standardizing factor
Population at risk

So if we put in our data from above:

New York City

2, 250
 100, 000  .0003082  100, 000
7, 300, 000

What does that mean? It means that each person in New York City (each of the
7.3 million people) has a .0003082 of a chance of being a victim of a criminal homi-
cide that year. That is very difficult to interpret in a meaningful way, hence the
multiplication by the standardizing factor, 100,000.

.0003082  100, 000  30.82

This is much easier to interpret. It means that for every 100,000 residents of
New York City in 1990, just about 31 of them would be killed.
And now let’s plug in the numbers for the Washington DC example above:

475
 100, 000  79.16
600, 000
4 1 Introduction

Or, out of 100,000 residents of Washington, DC, about 79 would be killed in 1990.
So, at first glance of the numbers of murders it appears that residents of New York
City are 12 times more likely to be killed (2250 vs. 475), but when population sizes
are taken into consideration, residents of Washington DC are actually 2.5 times
more likely to be killed (79.1 vs. 30.82).
It must be noted that there are two ways to increase a rate: increase the numerator
(more murders) or decrease the denominator (fewer population at risk). Some of the
largest increases in murder rates are actually due to populations decreasing (middle-
class exodus from inner cities, such as what happened in Washington, DC in the late
1980s–early 1990s fueled the increase in the murder rate as much as the increase in
the numbers of murders did).
The final issue of rates is a bit esoteric. The risk of death by specific causes will
change with the changing demographic makeup of a population (Anderson &
Rosenberg, 1998). For example, if a population has a lot of people over 75 years of
age, there would be an increased risk within the population of death from cardiac
disease and certain cancers. The risk amount is a function of the population charac-
teristics. If a population has a huge increase in births, the number of fatalities from
SIDS would be expected to rise as well. It would be a mistake to attribute the rise in
fatalities to anything other than the changes in the age distribution in the population.
The risk of dying from murder is not evenly distributed within a population.
Following the previous example, if there were a large baby boom, then 16–24 years
later, there would be an expected increase in the numbers of murders, simply as a
function of the increased number of at-risk people. None of the sources of data, save
one (the CDC data) take the impact of the changes in age distributions on the homi-
cide rates into account. This will be discussed in Chap. 3.

References

Anderson, R. N., & Rosenberg, H. M. (1998). Age standardization of death rates: Implementation
of the year 2000 standard. National Vital Statistics Reports, 47(3), 1–17.
Elandt-Johnson, R. C. (1975). Definition of rates: Some remarks on their use and misuse. American
Journal of Epidemiology, 102, 267–271.
Chapter 2
Police Data

General Description

When people think about homicide data, the first source of information that comes
to mind most often will be the data collected by the police. Police are almost always
called in response to a criminal homicide event, and keep records of the event. There
are a few specific sources that compile police data on these events that will be
explored.
The United States is somewhat unique in the world of policing, in that the police
are organized almost entirely at a local level, with the large majority of interactions
with the public and subsequent data collections of those interactions generated by
the numerous local agencies. There are far fewer State and Federal agencies, but of
course they have relevant data to contribute as well. According to the Bureau of
Justice Statistics (BJS), about two thirds of all police agencies in the United States
are local (12,500 of the 18,000 or so agencies) (Reaves, 2011). With the inclusion
of the 3100 or so county Sheriff Offices, it becomes clear that there are a lot of
American police agencies, and most of them are local (or county). There are also
178 Tribal agencies (BJS, 2015a), approximately 750 college or university campus
police agencies (BJS, 2015b), 73 Federal agencies (excluding Military, CIA, and
TSA Federal Air Marshals) (BJS, 2015c), 50 primary State law enforcement agen-
cies, about 1700 special jurisdiction agencies and 640 other agencies, primarily
county constable offices in Texas (Reaves, 2011).
As there are so many agencies, it would be impossible to have an accurate picture
of the realities of crime levels if one were to examine each agency’s crime data by
itself. The overwhelming numbers of agencies aside, the variation in local laws and
definitions of crimes would make comparisons between departments and states next
to impossible. So starting in 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was
tasked with collecting data to give national estimates of crime (Federal Bureau of
Investigation, 2004). This voluntary collection system was given the title of the
Uniform Crime Reports for the United States and Its Possessions, and is most

© The Author(s) 2016 5

A. Dobrin, Homicide Data Sources, SpringerBriefs in Criminology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19881-1_2
6 2 Police Data

commonly known as the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, or the UCR. According
to the FBI, “The program’s primary objective is to generate reliable information for
use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management,” but notes that
eclipsing this is the reliance on the data collected by the UCR by the public,
researchers, politicians, and various other stakeholders (FBI, 2014a). It is by far the
most accessible and used crime data source in the United States.
Researchers new to the study of crime data might think that the “Uniform” in
“Uniform Crime Reports” refers to the uniforms commonly worn by police in the
United States. It does not. It refers to the uniformity of the reporting documents
across the various jurisdictions necessary to create one standardized document
regardless of local variation in laws or phrases used to describe crimes. For exam-
ple, one state might call an action a battery while another might call the same action
an aggravated assault. The UCR needed to standardize the language so that regard-
less of what each locality called the action, the same recording mechanism would be
used everywhere, in order to collect data on similar events.
The initial UCR submissions in 1930 from 400 agencies represented 43 states
(plus Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) has grown to a system that covers all 50
states: 98 % of the population (98.8 % in metropolitan areas, 92.9 % in cities outside
metropolitan areas, and 93.5 % in nonmetropolitan areas), from over 18,000 differ-
ent agencies (FBI, 2014a). Today’s UCR represents city, county, tribal, university
and college, state, and federal police agencies.
To be qualified to submit data to the UCR program, agencies must “be a bona
fide law enforcement agency with sworn officers who possess full arrest powers”
(FBI, 2011).

Jurisdiction

With so many agencies and departments operating in the United States, there will
inevitably be overlapping jurisdictions. That is to say, when a crime takes place in
some specific places, there can be a number of police agencies that can have inves-
tigatory and arrest capabilities. It would be misleading and inaccurate if each agency
were to report the criminal event, grossly inflating the number of crimes in the
country. The guidelines the FBI has set up to report crimes from these multijurisdic-
tional areas are to identify the volume and nature of crime in communities, not as a
quantification of agency workload or an opportunity to take credit for solving crimes
(FBI, 2004). “To make sure that offenses are not reported by more than one agency,
the UCR follows these guidelines:
1. City law enforcement agencies should report offenses that occur within their city
jurisdictions.
2. County or state law enforcement agencies should report offenses that take place
in the county outside the limits of the city.
3. Federal agencies should report offenses within their investigative jurisdictions if
they are not being reported by a local/state law enforcement agency.
Publications and Definitions 7

4. When two or more local, state, tribal, or federal agencies are involved in the
investigation of the same offense and there is a written or oral agreement defin-
ing the roles of the investigating agencies, the agreement must designate which
agency will report the offense.
5. When two or more federal agencies are involved in the investigation of the same
offense and there is no written or oral agreement defining their roles, the federal
agency having lead or primary investigative jurisdiction should report the data. If
there is uncertainty as to which is the lead or primary agency, the agencies must
agree on which agency will report the offense.
6. Agencies must report only those arrests made for offenses committed within
their own jurisdictions.
7. The recovery of property should be reported only by the agency from whose
jurisdiction it was stolen, regardless of who or which agency recovered it”
(FBI, 2004).

Publications and Definitions

There are three major UCR publications that are relevant for this discussion. The
first by far will provide the bulk of the information presented, Crime in the United
States (CIUS). So numerous is the information presented here that it is often referred
to, mistakenly, as “the UCR.” For most needs, it is the primary source for police data
concerning crime and it presents detailed data on criminal homicide. The two other
publications are Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) and
Hate Crime Statistics, both of which supplement CIUS with specialized reporting.
All of the publications and information provided therein can be found on the web at
http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/crimestats. Additionally, the FBI has created an
online tool to conduct basic analyses of these data with their UCR Data Tool, which
can be found at: http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/.
The event of interest for this reading is criminal homicide. Within the UCR, there
are three categories of data collected that will be explored. First are Murder and
Nonnegligent Manslaughters. These are defined as, “The willful (nonnegligent)
killing of one human being by another.” This specifically excludes suicides, acci-
dents, fetal deaths, assaults-to-murders, traffic fatalities, and attempts to murder
(classified as aggravated assaults). Some traffic fatalities are coded as Manslaughter
by Negligence, the second category. In general, Manslaughter by Negligence is
defined as, “The killing of another person through gross negligence.” The third rel-
evant category of data on fatal events that the UCR compiles is Justifiable Homicide.
There are two possible scenarios for a justifiable homicide, “The killing of a felon
by a peace officer in the line of duty,” and “the killing of a felon, during the commis-
sion of a felony, by a private citizen.” This data collection system reports only the
willful (nonnegligent) killing a person by another, not the criminal liability of the
parties involved (FBI, 2004).
8 2 Police Data

Collection Systems

Within the UCR program, there are a few different reporting programs that collect
data on criminal homicides. The two major classifications of the reporting systems
are the Summary Program and the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

Summary Program

The Summary program within the UCR includes the oldest, largest, and most
commonly used data collection systems of the UCR program. Its collection mecha-
nisms have traditionally been paper forms, but the goal of the FBI is to migrate to
electronic formats. Within this program are different reporting forms, including the
Return A, the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR), Law Enforcement Officers
Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) and Hate Crime Statistics.
The primary data source for the UCR is the Return A. It is simply a monthly
count of the offenses reported to or discovered by the police agency in its jurisdic-
tion. The only information that can be gathered from the Return A is the number of
events known to the police that occur within their jurisdiction. No details about the
events are collected other than the monthly count. Missing data (usually from agen-
cies that don’t submit a report) are estimated (Akiyama & Propheter, 2005; Lynch
& Jarvis, 2008; Schneider & Wiersema, 1990) (Table 2.1).
As the Return A did not report anything beyond the monthly count of criminal
events, in 1962 the FBI added the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). This
detailed collection captures information on the age, sex, ethnicity, and race of

Table 2.1 Return A Example: number of murders and nonnegligent manslaughters per 100,000
inhabitants by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan counties, by population group, 2013
Number of
murders and Rate per
Population nonnegligent 100,000 Number of 2013 estimated
Population group range manslaughters inhabitants agencies population
Metropolitan 100,000 1457 3.5 165 41,660,407
counties and over
25,000 to 654 2.9 431 22,519,533
99,999
Under 25,000 226 4.7 1145 4,774,809
Nonmetropolitan 25,000 266 2.8 251 9,368,448
counties and over
10,000 269 3.0 563 9,037,791
to 24,999
Under 10,000 169 4.2 1276 4,044,229
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014a). Crime in the United States, 2013. Washington,
DC: US Department of Justice. Adapted from Table 18
Collection Systems 9

Table 2.2 Supplementary Homicide Reports example: murder circumstances by sex of victim, 2013
Circumstances Total murder victims Male Female Unknown
Total 12,253 9523 2707 23
Felony type total: 1909 1563 345 1
Rape 20 3 17 0
Robbery 686 605 81 0
Burglary 94 71 23 0
Larceny-theft 16 12 4 0
Motor vehicle theft 27 17 10 0
Arson 37 23 14 0
Prostitution and commercialized vice 13 11 2 0
Other sex offenses 9 2 7 0
Narcotic drug laws 386 352 34 0
Gambling 7 6 1 0
Other-not specified 614 461 152 1
Suspected felony type 122 82 40 0
Other than felony type total: 5782 4293 1485 4
Romantic triangle 69 50 19 0
Child killed by babysitter 30 20 10 0
Brawl due to influence of alcohol 93 74 19 0
Brawl due to influence of narcotics 59 42 17 0
Argument over money or property 133 110 23 0
Other arguments 2889 2003 885 1
Gangland killings 138 128 10 0
Juvenile gang killings 584 566 18 0
Institutional killings 15 15 0 0
Sniper attack 6 6 0 0
Other-not specified 1766 1279 484 3
Unknown 4440 3585 837 18
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014a). Crime in the United States, 2013. Washington,
DC: US Department of Justice. Adapted from Table 13

murder victims, the same demographic characteristics of the offenders when known,
the weapon used, victim/offender relationship, and the circumstances surrounding
the offense. As these are more detailed reports, and data not reported to the SHR are
not estimated, it is understandable that the number of events reported by the SHR is
smaller than from the Return A (Table 2.2).
The Return A and the SHR are the primary UCR Summary sources of data for
criminal homicide, but LEOKA and Hate Crimes contribute detailed information as
well. Data on police officers killed in the line of duty has been collected since 1937,
and since 1972 published a separate document focusing on this subset of criminal
homicides (it was titled Law Enforcement Officers Killed Summary until 1982)
(FBI, 2014b). LEOKA is collected in order to describe situations in which officers
are killed or assaulted in the line of duty and publishes the data to aid agencies in
10 2 Police Data

Table 2.3 Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) example: law enforcement
officers feloniously killed, by type of weapon, 2004–2013
Type of
weapon Total 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Number 511 57 55 48 58 41 48 56 72 49 27
of victim
officers
Total 474 54 50 46 56 35 45 55 63 44 26
firearms
Handgun 345 36 42 36 39 25 28 38 50 33 18
Rifle 87 13 3 8 8 6 15 15 7 7 5
Shotgun 40 5 5 2 8 4 2 2 6 3 3
Type of 2 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0
firearm
not
reported
Knife or 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
other
cutting
instrument
Bomb 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0
Blunt 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
instrument
Personal 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 0
weapons
Vehicle 28 2 5 2 2 4 3 1 6 2 1
Other 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014b). Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted,
2013. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. Adapted from Table 27

developing policies to improve officer safety. It reports statistical data for the events,
as well as detailed scenario descriptions. LEOKA considers a police officer fatality
as a line of duty death if it occurred when the officer was on or off duty and acting
in an official capacity. This is a criminal homicide when an officer is killed “because
of or while performing his or her official duties and as a direct result of a criminal
act by a subject.” The deciding factor for it being in “official capacity” depends on
whether the officer was reacting to a situation that would ordinarily fall within the
scope of his or her official duties as a law enforcement officer. This definition
excludes deaths caused by heart attacks or other natural causes, suicides, and deaths
occurring while the officer is acting in a military capacity (FBI, 2004) (Table 2.3).
Data for LEOKA are unique in the number of sources used for them, and the
level of detail reported. Line of duty fatalities are reported to the UCR from agencies
in their regular reporting to the program. Additionally, FBI field offices report these
deaths to the UCR, and some nonprofit organizations that provide services to the
families of officers killed in the line of duty provide information. When notified of
a line of duty death, LEOKA and FBI field office staff contact the officer’s agency
Collection Systems 11

Table 2.4 Hate Crime Murder or nonnegligent

Statistics: Offense type: type Bias motivation manslaughter
by bias motivation, 2013
Total 5
Race: 2
Anti-White 1
Anti-Black 1
Sexual Orientation: 2
Anti-Gay (Male) 2
Ethnicity: 1
Anti-Hispanic or Latino 1
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014c). Hate
Crime Statistics, 2013. Washington, DC: US
Department of Justice. Adapted from Table 4
Note: The multiple bias motivation categories that did
not have a murder/nonnegligent manslaughter were
removed from this table for space considerations

for detailed information. They also collect criminal history data from the FBI’s
Interstate Identification Index about the previous criminal record of the identified
offender (FBI, 2014b). For each of these fatalities, LEOKA provides a detailed
narrative of the event surrounding the fatality.
Following passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, the UCR Program
began collecting data on crimes in which the offender’s motivation was based on the
victim’s perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin. In
1994, Congress amended the Act to include bias against physical or mental disabil-
ity. The 2013 data for the first time include the bias categories of gender (male and
female) and gender identity (transgender and gender nonconforming), which were
mandated in 2009, and whether hate crimes were committed by, or directed against,
juveniles (FBI, 2015a). After a limited start, the data collected in this program most
recently cover 93.3 % of the population, and come from 49 states and Washington,
DC (FBI, 2015a). This collection system includes mechanisms for reporting bias
motivated criminal homicides, but it should be noted that that hate crime data reports
the additional element of bias in those offenses already being reported to the UCR
Program (FBI, 2014c). That is to say, these murders are already reported in the
primary Summary Programs, so they should not be added to them to create a national
estimate of criminal homicides (Table 2.4).

National Incident-Based Reporting System

In the mid-1980s, consumers of UCR data proposed an overhaul of the Summary

system to address shortcomings in the collection systems (see Loftin & McDowall,
2010). The resulting program became the National Incident-Based Reporting
System (NIBRS), which first collected data in 1989 (FBI, 2013). NIBRS allows for
12 2 Police Data

the collection of up to ten criminal offenses during a single incident. For the known
incidents, police collect data on the offense, victim, property, offender, and arrestee
information (FBI, 2004).
Three major changes that were designed to improve the data quality that NIBRS
implemented were: requiring certification for each reporting agency (in some states,
the states are certified in NIBRS, then they train the local agencies to use the sys-
tem); more detailed instructions for submissions (multiple hundred-page plus man-
uals for NIBRS as compared to a few pages of instruction for the SHR); and
computerized submission formats, allowing for better updating and editing
(Addington, 2004).
In 2013, 32 states were NIBRS certified, but most agencies within those states
don’t use the NIBRS program still. In only half of the certified states (16) are all of
the agencies NIBRS respondents. Variation in quality of data reporting between
states is an issue (Barnett-Ryan & Swanson, 2008). All large city agencies report
using the Summary format, not NIBRS. So overall, about 7000 agencies use NIBRS,
and after the data are submitted, the FBI converts all of the submitted data to Summary
format as well, so that historical trend data can continue in the same structure (FBI,
2014a). Because of this, no table will be presented to illustrate NIBRS data.

Voluntary Reporting

As noted earlier, the UCR system is voluntary. As such, there are some agencies that
do not report, or some that only report part of the time. Sporadic failure to report is
one of the leading mechanisms for missing data within the UCR. In 46 of the 50
states, local agencies submit their reports to the state and not directly to the FBI. In
25 states, this is mandatory (the state mandates it, not the FBI). While it is manda-
tory in those states for localities to report to the state, it is not mandatory for the
localities to report to the FBI, or for the state to report to the FBI (FBI, 2014a).
There are also some reporting programs that at first appear to lack the voluntary
aspect, but in fact, still are. For example, Colleges and Universities that accept any
federal financial assistance are required to campus crime statistics and security
information to the Department of Education (DOE). This is based on the Crime
Awareness and Campus Security Act of 1990 (Title II of Public Law 101–542),
which in 1998 was renamed to The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security
Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act in remembrance of a student who was slain
in her dorm room in 1986 (Westat & Mann, 2011). The data collection tools for the
DOE Clery Act directly follow UCR Summary Guidelines and forms, so it is of
little effort for the institution to submit to both federal collections. While it is not
mandatory for Colleges and Universities to report to the UCR, most do.
Also in 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which mandated
that the Attorney General collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of preju-
dice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The Attorney General
delegated this to the FBI, which in turn made it a part of the UCR system. But it must
Caveats and Concerns 13

be noted that while the FBI is required to report Hate Crime data, it is still voluntary
for local and state agencies to submit data to the UCR program (FBI, 2014c).
A note concerning Federal Agencies: While the UCR descriptions list Federal
Agencies as a source of data submission, only two Federal Agencies actually report
summary data (besides line of duty deaths of officers). These are the National
Institutes of Health and the Department of Interior (which includes the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Fish and
Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service) (see Table 11, Sub-table “Federal
Agencies”, 2013 CIUS) (FBI, 2014a). The number of Federal Agencies not report-
ing the UCR Program is surprising, and of most note, the FBI themselves! In the late
1980s, there was a little-known attempt to rectify this within the NIBRS program,
to implement what was referred to as “FIBRS,” the Federal Incident-Based
Reporting System. The “Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988” (S.2829,
1988; FBI, 1991) was not enacted, but certain agencies, primarily those dealing
with Tribal lands and the military adopted it in spirit. Tribal agencies have begun to
report to the UCR program, the military has not.

Caveats and Concerns

The fatal crime data collected by the various programs within the UCR are well
documented and while they are of moderate to decent quality, there are some issues
of which consumers of these data need to be aware. These concerns are not debili-
tating, and for the most part need only to be noted, and do not invalidate the data
quality. They are simply the realities of using data from these sources.

Trend Issues

There are a few items of note if the researcher examines UCR data representing a
long period of time. First, the amount of the United States for which UCR reports
data, or the coverage area. As noted earlier, when it first began in 1930, the UCR
contained information from 400 agencies representing 43 states (plus Alaska,
Hawaii, and Puerto Rico). This was about 40 % of the population at the time (FBI,
1930; US Census, 2013a). Coverage increased rapidly, by even 1 year later it had
gone up to 47 % (FBI, 1931; US Census, 2013b). The UCR programs now cover all
50 states: 98 % of the population (98.8 % in metropolitan areas, 92.9 % in cities
outside metropolitan areas, and 93.5 % in nonmetropolitan areas), from over 18,000
different agencies (FBI, 2014a). If all things are equal, and the amount of area cov-
ered by the UCR increases, it would appear that the amount of crime would increase
as well, simply because a larger amount of agencies reported crimes.
The issue of population changes is a note of concern regarding the UCR if the
researcher uses data over a long period of time. Initially, it would appear that this is
14 2 Police Data

not an issue, as rates can easily be calculated to account for any changes in the
population, either growth or reduction. This is true, but it simplifies a few realities.
For example, during the years of the UCR coverage, some cities rapidly expanded
their borders, annexing the entire county and for all practical purposes, the county
area became the city. There is nothing the researcher can do about this, of course,
other than be aware of it and any potential impact on crime data. What it most likely
means in terms of murders is that the number of murders in that city increased (the
coverage area expands, and included more people, so the number of murders could
not decrease, and most likely increased some), but the rate most likely went down,
as the population that was added was most likely suburban or rural, and had a lower
risk of murders. For example, in 1963 the city of Nashville, Tennessee consolidated
with Davidson County, and is now a single political entity. Jacksonville, Florida,
consolidated with Duval County in 1968. It is beyond the scope of this text to list
every consolidated city/county, but it is a note the researcher should be exposed to.
There are a few other changes over time within the UCR programs that are not as
much of an issue for this text, as we will be looking at only one crime type. Murder,
overall, has a very high reporting rate, and as such, is less likely to fluctuate over
time, as many other crimes are, so reporting rate differences are less of concern as
for researchers of other events. Other crimes (most recently rape in 2012) have had
definitional changes that make comparing before-and-after the change in definition
problematic.

Missing Data

The topic of greatest potential issues has to do with missing data. This has been a
primary concern of researchers for quite some time concerning all sources of data,
and as Biderman and Reiss (1967) point out in their classic exploration of this sub-
ject, it has been a point of discussion for quite some time. In his early discourse on
the topic, Bulwer (1836) coins a term that has been in use ever since, the “Dark
Figure of Crime.” While sounding like a scary figure lurking in the shadows about
to pounce on unsuspecting victims, the Dark Figure is simply the amount of crime
unknown to data collectors or researchers. For the purposes of this section, the Dark
Figure for the police is the amount of criminal homicides of which they are unaware,
or don’t have data on which to report. Added to that, the Dark Figure for researchers
will also include data the police fail to report. While for most crimes, one of the
causes of the gap in police documentation is the lack of notification of the crimes by
the public, which is not the case for fatal crimes. Of greater impact is the lack of
reporting of known events by police agencies to the FBI, either from short-term
lapses in some agencies reporting occasionally, to entire agencies failing to report.
These lapses in reporting are almost always bureaucratic in nature.
As noted earlier, with the Return A, missing data has been estimated, but not
missing data from the SHR. That means that any discussion that uses information in
greater detail than simply the number of criminal homicides that occurred in a given
Reporting Variability 15

time period (including variables such as race or age of the victim, weapon, or any
information about the offender) is undercounting the actual amount of events. There
is also the issue of certain agencies not reporting to the UCR, either haphazardly, or
systematically. Florida, for example, has a gap in its trend data from 1988 to 1991
that is quite noticeable (Loftin & McDowall, 2010).1
UCR program data also do not cover certain facilities and jurisdictions. Crimes
that occur on military bases are reported in a different data system, and as of yet, are
not linked to the UCR system (this will be covered in a later section of the text). In
addition to these missing jurisdictions, crimes that occur within various correctional
systems are not in the UCR programs. The data systems that do collect information
on fatal crimes within correctional systems will also be discussed later.

Reporting Variability

The major criticisms of the UCR system show that the quality of data reported must
be viewed with a critical eye, but are much less damning for criminal homicides.
Loftin and McDowall (2010) summarize the criticisms of the UCR programs quite
concisely: There is variability in reporting practices in different agencies, so the
UCR is not as Uniform as it is titled; low reporting rates by the public to the police;
biased reporting by police; a few agencies don’t report at all or report poorly; there
is limited information of details other than the count of the events; and that the UCR
isn’t a pure data collection system, but rather promotes the interests of police agen-
cies. Almost all of these critiques are less of a concern for fatal crimes, other than
the missing detailed SHR data. Fatal crimes are reported by the public (or discov-
ered by the police) for the most part. While there may be some variability between
local jurisdictional definitions of the event, there are only a few choices to label the
fatal events in the UCR system, and they are well defined. The UCR has also added
Data Quality Guidelines (FBI, 2015b). And it also seems very unlikely that the
police manipulate fatal data in any way to promote their own interests. This can be
evaluated by comparing UCR data with other sources, and most relevant to this
argument, comparisons between the police data and other sources that examine the
frequency and details of the line of duty killings by police can be made. In fact,
when this was done (Loftin, Wiersema, McDowall, & Dobrin, 2003), the police
actually report a higher number of line of duty killings than did the other national
data source that collects data on such events (this will be discussed later). So the
notion that the UCR system promotes police interests does not appear to be valid for
fatal crimes.

1
For Florida, years ago I spoke with some data people at the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement about this. The staff there said that Florida did submit SHR numbers these years, but
they did not submit them on paper, as the UCR program required, but on floppy diskettes, which
were not able to be processed. I have no documentation to support this other than notes taken con-
cerning the phone calls—Adam Dobrin
16 2 Police Data

A well-known seminal summary of the UCR system from many years ago
supports the premise that the UCR data for fatal crimes is of good quality: “… many
criminologists agree that, despite its known shortcomings, the UCR furnishes fairly
valid indicators of comparative frequencies of serious crimes, though not of their
absolute frequencies” (Blau & Blau, 1982). For fatal crimes, the absolute frequencies
have a smaller Dark Figure, so the “known shortcomings” have much less impact.

References

Addington, L. A. (2004). The effect of NIBRS reporting on item missing data in murder cases.
Homicide Studies, 8(3), 193–213.
Akiyama, Y., & Propheter, S. K. (2005). Methods of data quality control: For uniform crime
reporting programs. Clarksburg, WV: Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
Barnett-Ryan, C., & Swanson, G. (2008). The role of state programs in NIBRS data quality: A case
study of two states. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 24(1), 18–31.
Biderman, A. D., & Reiss, A. J., Jr. (1967). On exploring the ‘Dark Figure’ of crime. Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science, 374, 1–15.
Blau, J. R., & Blau, P. M. (1982). The cost of inequality: Metropolitan structure and violent crime.
American Sociological Review, 47(1), 114–129.
Bulwer, H. L. (1836). France, social, literary, political, Vol. I, Book I: Crime (pp. 169–210).
London: Richard Bentley.
Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2015a). Tribal law enforcement. Retrieved January 7, 2015, from
http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=75.
Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2015b). Campus law enforcement. Retrieved January 7, 2015, from
http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=76.
Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2015c). Data collection: Census of federal law enforcement officer.
Retrieved January 7, 2015, from http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=250.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1930). Uniform Crime Reports, 1930. Volume 1, Number 5.
Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1931). Uniform Crime Reports, 1931. Volume 2, Number 12.
Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (1991). Addendum to Vol. 1. Data collection guidelines.
Washington, DC. US Government Printing Office.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2004). Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook. Washington, DC:
US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2011). Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) State Program Bulletin
11-4. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2013). National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) User
Manual. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2014a). Crime in the United States, 2013. Washington, DC: US
Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2014b). Law enforcement officers killed and assaulted, 2013.
Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2014c). Hate crime statistics, 2013. Washington, DC: US
Department of Justice.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2015a). About hate crime statistics. Retrieved January 7, 2015,
from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2013/resource-pages/about-hate-crime/
abouthatecrime_final.
References 17

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2015b). Data quality guidelines. Retrieved January 7, 2015, from
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/data_quality_guidelines.
Loftin, C., & McDowall, D. (2010). The use of official records to measure crime and delinquency.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 26, 527–532.
Loftin, C., Wiersema, B., McDowall, D., & Dobrin, A. (2003). Underreporting of homicides by
police officers in the United States, 1976–1998. American Journal of Public Health, 93(7),
1117–1121.
Lynch, J. P., & Jarvis, J. P. (2008). Missing data and imputation in the uniform crime reports and
the effects on national estimates. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 24(1), 69–85.
Reaves, B. A. (2011). Census of state and local law enforcement agencies, 2008. Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Statistics.
S. 2829—100th Congress: Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988. (1988). In www.
GovTrack.us. Retrieved April 22, 2013, from http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/100/s2829.
Schneider, V., & Wiersema, B. (1990). Limits and the use of the uniform crime reports. In
D. Mackenzie, P. Baunach, & R. Roberg (Eds.), Measuring crime: Large scale, long-range
efforts (pp. 21–48). Albany: State University of New York Press.
US Census Bureau. (2013a). Fast facts: 1930. Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.census.
gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1930_fast_facts.html.
US Census Bureau. (2013b). Historical national population estimates: July 1, 1900 to July 1, 1999.
Retrieved May 27, 2013, from http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt.
Westat, D. W., & Mann, J. L. (2011). The handbook for campus safety and security reporting.
Washington, DC: US Department of Education.
Chapter 3
Public Health Data

General Description

For most crimes, the UCR data are often the only long-term national data option,
and other than a few specialty subparts of the UCR program, it simply reports the
count of the crimes. Of great benefit to researchers of homicides, the FBI created
additional reporting programs for fatal crimes, but these are not the only options for
the researcher. There are other data systems available. The largest and methodologi-
cally soundest of these is the compilation of coroner’s reports/death certificates by
the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Health
Statistics (NCHS). This system is called the National Vital Statistics System
(NVSS), and is responsible for the registration of vital events (births, deaths, mar-
riages, divorces, and fetal deaths) (CDC, 2015a). Of course, in this discussion, the
data on deaths are the ones of interest, although there is one related source that links
birth certificates to death certificates that will be discussed below.
Registration of all deaths is a legal requirement in all 50 states (plus Washington,
DC, New York City, and the five territories of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands,
Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands)
(CDC, 2015a). A certifying physician, coroner or medical examiner provides a
death certificate for each known death and sends it to the vital statistics office for the
state. The vital statistics office from each state (plus the others listed) sends NCHS
the information from each death that occurs for which they have a death certificate.
These data cover 99.4 % of all estimated deaths in the country (Hoyert & Xu, 2012;
Murphy, Xu, & Kochanek, 2013).
The information that death certificates contain is a boon to the world of homicide
research. Details such as demographic data (age, race, ethnicity, and sex), cause of
death, and geographic information are reported. No information on offenders is
reported. But the CDC data are most valuable in describing the characteristics of
those being killed, allow for ease of comparisons between demographic groups, and
exploration of cause of death information (CDC, 2015b).

© The Author(s) 2016 19

A. Dobrin, Homicide Data Sources, SpringerBriefs in Criminology,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-19881-1_3
20 3 Public Health Data

Within the United States, death certificates must contain areas to record certain
information, as per the standards of the “The US Standard Certificate of Death,”
(CDC, 2011a). These required spaces provide the opportunity for information about
injuries that resulted in or contributed to the death, “as well as the circumstances of
the accident or violence which produced any such injuries” (CDC, 2011a). The
cause of death of current interest is the injury resulting from a form of assault that
leads directly or indirectly to death.

International Classification of Diseases

While the formatting of death certificates in the United States is rather standardized,
the coding of causes of death is standardized across the world. The World Health
Organization (WHO) has a longstanding and well-adopted standardization protocol
called the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) (WHO, 2015a). It is now on
its tenth revision (the 11th revision has already started, with a release date of 2017
being projected), so the codes used on current death certificates are ICD-10 codes.
ICD codes provide standardized classifications and codings for diseases and other
health problems recorded on many types of health and vital records (such as death
certificates). The codes are used to provide data to measure incidence and prevalence
of a myriad of health problems, diseases, as well as the source information for the
compilation of national mortality and morbidity statistics (WHO, 2015b).
The codes of interest in the ICD-10 are for Assault (X85-Y09) and Legal
Intervention (Y35). “Assault” is more frequently referred to as “Homicide,” and is
defined as “Injuries inflicted by another person with intent to injure or kill, by any
means,” and “Legal Interventions” result from “injuries inflicted by the police or
other law-enforcing agents, including military on duty, in the course of arresting or
attempting to arrest lawbreakers, suppressing disturbances, maintaining order, and
other legal action” and “legal executions” (CDC, 2011b). Both homicides and legal
interventions exclude deaths resulting from war (Table 3.1).

Table 3.1 International Classification of Disease, 10th Revision codes for homicides and legal
interventions
ICD-10 Code Description
X85 Assault by drugs, medicaments and biological substances
X86 Assault by corrosive substance
X87 Assault by pesticides
X88 Assault by gases and vapors
X89 Assault by other specified chemicals and noxious substances
X90 Assault by unspecified chemical or noxious substance
X91 Assault by hanging, strangulation and suffocation
X92 Assault by drowning and submersion
X93 Assault by handgun discharge
X94 Assault by rifle, shotgun and larger firearm discharge
X95 Assault by other and unspecified firearm discharge
X96 Assault by explosive material
(continued)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The nervous system consists of a central ganglion situated in the
proboscis sheath; it is oval and flattened in shape. The ganglion
gives off nerves to the proboscis, and two main trunks which pierce
the proboscis-sheath and run backward surrounded by a cluster of
muscle-fibres, the whole being termed the retinaculum; in the male
they are in connexion with a special genital ganglion which lies near
the ductus ejaculatorius.

With the exception of certain sensory papillae in the neighbourhood

of the male genital orifice, and of three similar papillae mentioned by
Kaiser on the proboscis, the Acanthocephala are devoid of sense
organs.

The Acanthocephala are dioecious; their generative organs are

developed in connexion with the ligament, a cord-like structure which
arises between the inner and outer layer of the hinder end of the
proboscis sheath and traverses the body-cavity, ending posteriorly in
connexion with the genital ducts. The testes lie in this ligament; they
are paired oval bodies which open each into a vas deferens. The
vasa deferentia each bear three lateral diverticula, the vesiculae
seminales; and three pairs of cement glands pour their secretion into
a duct which opens into the vasa deferentia; the latter unite and
open by a penis which is withdrawn into a genital bursa, but is
capable of being extruded.
 Fig. 96.—An optical section through a male Neorhynchus clavaeceps
Zed. (From Hamann.) a, Proboscis; b, proboscis sheath; c,
retractor of the proboscis; d, cerebral ganglion; f, f, retractors of
the proboscis sheath; g, g, lemnisci, each with two giant nuclei; h,
space in sub-cuticular layer of the skin; l, ligament; m, m, testes;
o, glands on vas deferens; p, giant nucleus in skin; q, opening of
vas deferens.

The two ovaries are formed in the ligament of the female in a

corresponding position to that occupied by the testes in the male, but
at an early stage they break down into packets of cells, of which
those of the peripheral layer develop into ova at the cost of the
central cells, which serve them as a food supply. As these masses
grow and increase in number they rupture the walls of the ligament,
and escape into the body-cavity, in which they float. The ova are
fertilised whilst floating in the fluid of the body-cavity. The eggs
segment and the embryo is formed whilst still in the body of the
mother.

The embryos escape by means of a complicated apparatus the

details of which vary in the different species, but which, like many of
the organs in these animals, consists of very few cells with very large
nuclei. This apparatus consists of three parts: the bell, the uterus,
and the oviduct. The bell is a large funnel-shaped structure, which
opens into the body-cavity, and is connected with the end of the
ligament; near its lower end, where it is continuous with the uterus, is
a second smaller opening situated dorsally. By the contraction and
expansion of its lips the oval embryos are swallowed and pass on
through the uterus to the oviduct, which opens at the posterior end of
the body. If the bell takes in any of the less mature eggs which are
spherical in shape, they are passed back into the body-cavity
through the above-mentioned dorsal opening, and the same orifice
permits the passage of the spermatozoa even when the bell is full of
embryos.
 Fig. 97.—An egg of Echinorhynchus acus Rud. surrounded by three
egg-shells. Highly magnified. The egg has segmented, and the
cells are differentiated into a, the entoblast, and b, the ectoblast;
c, spines. (From Hamann.)

Embryology.—After fertilisation the egg surrounds itself with several

egg-shells, three of which are usually distinguished; the embryo is
already far advanced in its development by the time it leaves the
body of the mother and passes out into the alimentary canal of the
Vertebrate host. It leaves the body of this second host with the
faeces, and is eaten by the first or larval host, usually a small
Crustacean or water-insect, but in some cases a fish, within whose
alimentary canal it casts its membranes and becomes actively
mobile. By means of a ring of hooks developed round the anterior
end it bores its way through the wall of the alimentary canal, and
after some time—three weeks in E. proteus—comes to rest in the
body-cavity of its host. By this time most of the organs of the adult,
with the exception of the reproductive glands, are already well
established; the latter only attain maturity when the first host is eaten
by the second, and the larvae find themselves in the intestine of a
Vertebrate.
 Fig. 98.—A, A larval Echinorhynchus proteus Westrumb. further
developed than in Fig. 97. Highly magnified. The entoblast has
developed inside it the proboscis a; b, b, the giant nuclei of the
ectoblast. B, The entoblast at a more advanced stage, the
ectoblast is not shown. The outermost layer of cells will form the
muscles of the body-wall; the body-cavity has appeared; a,
proboscis; b, cerebral ganglion; c, body-cavity; d, d, the testes
beginning to appear in the ligament; e, cells which will form the
generative ducts.

Some of the details of the development are very remarkable, and a

short account of them may be given. The segmentation of the egg is
unequal; it results in the formation of a central biscuit-shaped mass
of small cells and a peripheral mass of larger cells; the former is
called by Hamann[218] the entoblast, the latter the ectoblast. From
the entoblast arise all the organs of the body but the sub-cuticle and
the associated lemnisci, which are formed from the ectoblast. The
latter has a remarkable history; the cells begin to break down and
lose their outlines, whilst their nuclei fuse together and form a small
number of giant nuclei, which lie scattered throughout the syncytium
thus formed. The syncytium surrounds the entoblast on all sides; by
this time the anteriorly-placed hooks have appeared; in E. proteus
there are ten of these, but the number is not the same in all species.
The syncytium is in a fluid state, with a few gigantic nuclei floating in
it; these now lose their spherical shape, and throwing out processes
become amoeboid; in this way they bud off small portions of their
substance, and from these the oval nuclei of the sub-cuticle and the
lemnisci arise. The rest of the syncytium hardens into the fibrillar
matrix of the sub-cuticle, leaving, however, scattered spaces which
form the sub-cuticular sinuses of the adult. An interesting feature of
N. clavaeceps and Arhynchus hemignathi is that the skin of the adult
retains the larval features, and it and the lemnisci consist of a
syncytium with a very few giant nuclei scattered through it. Hamann
counted only eight in the skin and two in each lemniscus in the
example figured on p. 178.

Fig. 99.—A, The larva of Echinorhynchus proteus from the body-cavity

of Phoxinus laevis, with the proboscis retracted and the whole still
enclosed in a capsule. B, A section through the same; a, the
invaginated proboscis; b, proboscis sheath; c, beginning of the
neck; d, lemniscus. Highly magnified. (Both from Hamann.)

The whole of the rest of the body is formed by the entoblast. Within
the latter a circular split arises which separates a single layer of
outermost cells from an axial strand of many cells (Fig. 98, B). The
split is the future body-cavity; the axial strand forms the proboscis, its
sheath, the cerebral ganglion, muscles, etc., and the ligament with
the contained generative organs; the outermost layer of cells forms
the muscular lining to the skin. It is interesting to note that these cells
destined to become muscle-fibres are at first arranged as a single
layer of cubical epithelial cells lining the body-cavity; most of them
become circular muscle-fibres, but a few are pushed inwards so as
to lie next the body-cavity, and these become the longitudinal fibres.

Classification.—Until recently the Acanthocephala were supposed

to include but one genus, Echinorhynchus, with several hundred
species, but Hamann[219] has pointed out that these species present
differences which enabled him to divide the group into three families,
each with a corresponding genus. To these I have ventured to add a
fourth family, to include a remarkable species, Arhynchus
hemignathi, described below. The characters of the first three
families in the account given below are taken from Hamann's paper.
 Fig. 100.—Fully formed larva of Echinorhynchus proteus from the
body-cavity of Phoxinus laevis. (From Hamann.) Highly magnified.
a, Proboscis; b, bulla; c, neck; d, trunk; e, e, lemnisci.

Family I. Echinorhynchidae.—The body is elongated and smooth.

The proboscis-sheath has a double wall, and the proboscis is
invaginated into it. The central nerve-ganglion lies in the middle line,
as a rule on the posterior blind end of the proboscis-sheath. The
papillae which bear the hooks are only covered with a chitinous cap
at their apex, and the hooks have a process below. This family is by
far the largest; a few species only can be mentioned.
Echinorhynchus proteus lives in its mature form in fishes; the young
forms, up to a centimetre in length, are found living freely in the
intestine of numerous fresh-water fishes. Those found in Gobio
fluviatilis, the gudgeon; Leuciscus virgo; Lota vulgaris, the burbot or
eel-pout; young trout; Thymallus vulgaris, the grayling, seldom
surpass this size, but those found in Acerina cernua, the pope fish; in
Abramis bipunctatus; in Esox lucius,the pike, and in older trout,
attain or surpass double the length. As the parasites grow older they
bury their proboscis and neck in the wall of the intestine, the inner
surface of which is studded with the orange-coloured bodies of the
parasites. The proboscis is so deeply sunk in the wall of the
alimentary canal as to form a papilla on its outer surface (Fig. 92).
The larvae of E. proteus are found in the body-cavity of Gammarus
pulex, one of the Amphipod Crustacea, and also in the same position
in numerous fresh-water fishes; they must have passed into this first
host by the mouth and alimentary canal. If the liver of an infested
minnow, Leuciscus phoxinus, be examined, it will be found to contain
on its surface numerous spherical or egg-shaped capsules of an
orange colour, 2 to 2.5 mm. in length; these contain the larval forms
of the parasite. They develop into the adult form when the first host
is eaten by a carnivorous fish, but a complication may take place
when the larval form is found in Gammarus, as the latter, the first
host, may be eaten by a fish (intermediate host) in which the larva
does not become mature, and only develops sexual organs when
eaten by a carnivorous fish (second host). The larval form is also
found in Nemachilus barbatulus, Gobio fluviatilis, and the
sticklebacks Gasterosteus aculeatus and G. pungitius.

E. clavula Duj. is found in Salmo fario, Abramis brama, Cyprinus

carpio, Gobius niger, Lepadogaster gouanii, etc.; E. linstowi Ham. in
Leuciscus idus, Abramis ballerus, Abramis bipunctatus, and
Acipenser huso; E. lutzii Ham. was found by Dr. Lutz in Brazil in the
intestine of Bufo agua; E. angustatus Rud. occurs in such numbers
in the perch, Perca fluviatilis, as to almost occlude the lumen of the
intestine, and one out of every three or four fish in certain districts is
infested by it. It is also found in the pike, Esox lucius, and the barbel,
Barbus vulgaris. The first or larval host of this species is the Isopod
Asellus aquaticus. E. moniliformis Brews. is stated to attain maturity
in the human intestine. Except for the fact that G. gigas has once
been observed in the same place, this is the only human parasite
amongst the Acanthocephala. Its normal second hosts are Mus
decumanus and Myoxus quercinus, and its first or larval host, the
larvae of the beetle Blaps mucronata. E. porrigens Rud. is found in
considerable numbers in the small intestine of a fin-whale
(Balaenoptera sibbaldii), and E. strumosus Rud., in the small
intestine of a seal (Phoca vitulina), and in the body-cavity of the
angler fish (Lophius piscatorius). E. acus is common in the whiting,
Gadus merlangus.

Family II. Gigantorhynchidae.—Large forms with ringed, flattened,

and Taenia-like bodies. The hook-papillae are covered all over with
transparent chitinous sheaths with two root-like processes. The
proboscis-sheath is muscular and without a lumen. The central
nervous system is excentrically placed below the middle of the so-
called sheath. The lemnisci are long twisted tubes with a central
canal.

Hamann places three species in this family: Gigantorhynchus

echinodiscus, G. spira, and G. taenioides; but as he points out that
E. gigas resembles these in its more important structural features, it
seems advisable to include it here under the name G. gigas. The
members of the first family often present a transversely ringed
appearance after death, but the Gigantorhynchidae are ringed when
alive, and the circular canals in the skin show a certain regularity,
being arranged one between each two rings. There is no lumen in
the proboscis-sheath, which is not attached to the boundary between
the proboscis and the trunk, but to the inner surface of the proboscis,
and the whole can be retracted within the anterior portion of the
body, which is invaginable. There are always eight cement-glands,
and other differences exist in the musculature, hooks, and position of
the nervous system.

G. gigas occurs in the adult state in the small intestine of swine; in

Europe its first or larval host is believed to be the grubs of
Melolontha vulgaris and Cetonia aurata, but these beetles are
absent from America, though the parasite infests American hogs.
Stiles[220] has recently made some experiments which tend to show
that in the United States the source of infection is some species of
the beetle Lachnosterna, and he has succeeded in infecting the grub
of L. arcuata by feeding it on the eggs of the parasite; from one larva
he took 300 parasites six weeks after feeding it. L. arcuata is, like M.
vulgaris, phytophagous, but the grubs of both the beetles are fond of
frequenting manure heaps and patches of dung, and thus are much
exposed to the dangers of infection.

G. echinodiscus inhabits the intestine of ant-eaters, having been

found in Myrmecophaga jubata and Cycloturus didactylus. G. spira
lives in the king vulture Sarcorhampus papa, and G. taenioides in
Dicholophus cristatus, a species of Cariama.
Family III. Neorhynchidae.—Sexual maturity is reached in the larval
stage. The proboscis-sheath has a single wall. A few giant nuclei
only are found in the sub-cuticle and in the lemnisci. The circular
muscle layer is very simply developed. The longitudinal muscle-cells
are only present in certain places.

This family includes two species, Neorhynchus clavaeceps and N.

agilis, which afford interesting examples of paedogenesis. The sub-
cuticle and the lemnisci are dominated by a few giant nuclei, which
remain in the embryonic state and do not break up into numerous
nuclei as in other forms. The musculature is but little developed and
the longitudinal sheath hardly exists. The proboscis-sheath consists
of a simple muscular layer, and the short proboscis has few hooks
and presents an embryonic appearance.

The sexually-mature form lives in the carp, Cyprinus carpio; the

larval form is found, according to Villot,[221] encysted in the fat
bodies of the larva of Sialis lutaria, one of the Neuroptera, and in the
alimentary canal of the leech Nephelis octocula, and successful
experiments have been made in infecting some species of the water
snail Limnaea. N. agilis occurs in Mugil auratus and M. cephalus.

Family IV. Arhynchidae.—Short forms with the body divided into

three well-marked regions—head, collar, and trunk. The head is
pitted, the collar smooth, and the trunk wrinkled, not annulated, in
spirit specimens. There is no eversible introvert, and no introvert
sheath and no hooks. The sub-cuticle and the lemnisci have a few
giant nuclei, and the lemnisci are long and coiled.[222]

This family resembles the Gigantorhynchidae in the length and

curvature of its lemnisci, and the Neorhynchidae in the persistence
of the embryonic condition of the nuclei in the sub-cuticle and the
lemnisci; but in the shape of the body, its division into three well-
marked regions, the absence of eversible proboscis, proboscis
sheath, and hooks it stands alone, though it is nearer to the
Neorhynchidae than to either of the other families.

The single species Arhynchus hemignathi was found attached to the

skin around the anus of a Sandwich Island bird, Hemignathus
proceros. The bird is a member of a family Drepanididae, which is
entirely confined to the Sandwich Island group. Professor Newton
tells me that it is probable that the "food of Hemignathus consists
entirely of insects which it finds in or under the bark of trees," hence
it is probable that the second host of this parasite, if such exists,
must be looked for amongst the Insecta.

CHAPTER VII

CHAETOGNATHA

STRUCTURE—REPRODUCTION—HABITS—FOOD—CLASSIFICATION TABLE
OF IDENTIFICATION

At certain seasons and at certain times of the day the naturalist who
is investigating the fauna of the surface of the sea is apt to find his
tow-net crammed with innumerable transparent spindle-shaped
animals, which by their number and the way in which they become
entangled with rarer objects, often render useless the result of his
labours. These animals belong to the class Chaetognatha, which
includes three genera, Sagitta, Spadella, and Krohnia. Amongst
them are divided about twenty species, some of which, however, are
of doubtful value.

Anatomy.—The body of these animals is as transparent as crystal; it

is elongated, and bears a resemblance to certain torpedos, except
that the head forms a somewhat blunt termination to the spindle-
shaped body. The tail bears a caudal fin, and Spadella and Krohnia
have a single pair, and Sagitta two pairs, of lateral fins; all of which
are flattened horizontally.

The body is externally divisible into three regions—head, trunk, and

tail—and these correspond with the arrangement of the internal
organs.

Fig. 101.—Sagitta bipunctata. a, Vesicula seminalis. × 4. (After

Hertwig.)

The head is surrounded by a fold of skin, forming a hood, which is

most prominent at the sides (Fig. 102, g); within the hood the head
bears from two to four rows of short spines, and outside these a right
and left row of sickle-shaped hooks, the free ends of which in a state
of rest converge round the mouth, but when disturbed these hooks
can be widely divaricated.

The cavity of the body, or coelom, is divided into three distinct

chambers by the presence of two thin transverse walls or septa, one
situated between the head and the trunk, the other between the
trunk and the tail (Figs. 104, 105). In the head, this cavity is much
reduced by the presence of special muscles which move the spines,
hooks, etc.; and in the small species, such as Spadella
cephaloptera, the other two cavities are almost entirely occupied by
the digestive and reproductive organs[223]; but in the large species,
e.g. Sagitta hexaptera, a considerable space is left between the
internal organs and the skin, and this is occupied by a coelomic fluid.
If the skin of one of these larger species be punctured the fluid
escapes and the animal shrivels up. A longitudinal partition or
mesentery, with numerous pores in it, runs through these spaces,
dividing the body-cavity into a right and left half; in the region of the
trunk this mesentery supports the alimentary canal.

In addition to certain muscles in the head, which move the hooks,

etc., there is a muscular lining to the body-wall. This is divided into
two dorsal and two ventral bands, much in the same way as in
Nematodes. The muscle fibres are striated.

The mouth, situated either terminally—Spadella marioni[224]—or

below the head, leads into a pharynx; this passes into an intestine
lined by a single layer of ciliated cells with a few glandular ones
intermingled. The intestine runs straight through the body without
loop or coil, and opens by an anus situated at the junction of the
trunk and the tail. In most cases the anus is ventral or on the lower
surface, but Gourret asserts that in Spadella marioni it is on the
upper surface.

There are no special respiratory, excretory, or circulatory organs,

unless a glandular structure described by Gourret in the head of
Spadella marioni be a real kidney.

The nervous system consists of a supra-oesophageal ganglion or

brain situated in the head, and of a ventral ganglion lying in the
trunk; both these nerve centres are embedded in the epidermis, and
are connected with one another by means of two stout peri-
oesophageal nerves (Figs. 102, 104). The brain also gives off a pair
of nerves to the eyes, another pair to the olfactory organ, and a pair
which ultimately meet one another and so form a ring; on this are
certain ganglia giving off nerves which supply the muscles of the
head. Both the chief ganglia give off numerous nerves, which divide
and split up into a network of fibres which permeate the whole skin.
The sense organs are comparatively simple. A pair of very small
eyes lie in the skin of the head; they are of complex structure, and to
some extent remind one of the simple eyes of certain Crustacea.
Behind the eyes and also on the upper surface of the animal is an
unpaired organ which is usually described as olfactory in function
(Figs. 103, 105). This is a ring-shaped modification of the epidermis
drawn out into different shapes in the various species. The modified
epidermal cells bear long cilia. The remaining sensory organs found
in the group consist of clumps of modified cells scattered in round
groups over the surface of the body and of the fins. The central cells
of each group bear long tactile hairs, and are surrounded by
supporting cells.

Fig. 102.—Head of Sagitta bipunctata. A, Dorsal view; B, ventral view.

× about 33. (From Hertwig.) A, a, spines; b, nerves to lateral
cephalic ganglia; c, hooks; d, cephalic ganglion; e, olfactory
nerve; f, optic nerve; g, hood; h, commissure to ventral ganglion; j,
olfactory organ: B, a, c, and g as in A; k, mouth.

The Chaetognatha are hermaphrodite, and carry the female organs

in the trunk, the male in the tail. In a mature specimen the two
ovaries occupy almost all the space in the trunk between the
alimentary canal and the skin, and each is supported by a narrow
lateral mesentery. The ovary is traversed by a oviduct which often
contains spermatozoa; it is not clear how the eggs make their way
into the oviduct, which seems to have no internal opening and to act
largely as a receptaculum seminis. The oviducts open externally on
the upper side at the base of the lateral fin, close to the junction of
the tail and the trunk.
The cavity of the tail is divided into two lateral chambers by the
extension backward of the median vertical mesentery. In each of
these a testis and a vas deferens are found. The testes are solid
ridges formed by the growth of the lining cells of this part of the
body-cavity; the cells mature into spermatozoa, which break off and
float freely in the coelomic fluid. At the breeding season the whole
tail may be crowded with masses of spermatozoa, which are kept in
a more or less regular circulation by the ciliated cells lining the body-
wall. The vas deferens opens internally into the space where the
spermatozoa lie, and at the other end into a vesicula seminis, which
opens to the exterior. The position of the latter structure varies, and
is of some systematic value.

The eggs are laid in the water and as a rule float at the surface of the
sea. Spadella cephaloptera is, however, an exception to this rule, as
it attaches its eggs by means of a gelatinous stalk to sea-weeds. The
segmentation of the ovum is regular, and gives rise to a two-layered
stage or gastrula, which opens by a pore, the blastopore. This does
not, however, become the mouth, but closes up and the mouth
arises at the opposite pole. Perhaps the most interesting feature of
the development of Sagitta is that the cells destined to form the
reproductive organs separate from the other cells of the embryo at a
very early date, whilst it is still in the gastrula stage. There is no
larval form, but the young hatch out from the egg in a state
resembling the adult in all respects but that of size.
 Fig. 103.—Spadella cephaloptera. Dorsal view. x 30. (From Hertwig.) a,
Cephalic ganglion; b, commissure to ventral ganglion; c, olfactory
organ; d, alimentary canal; e, ovary; f, oviduct; g, testis; h,
vesicula seminalis.

Habits.—The Chaetognatha are essentially pelagic, and resemble

many other creatures that dwell at the surface of the ocean in being
almost completely transparent. Most species have been taken far out
at sea, but some are perhaps rather more numerous near the coast,
and one species, Spadella cephaloptera, is littoral. They swim by
means of muscular movements of the whole body; the fins have no
movement of their own, and seem to serve as balancers, and not as
locomotory organs. Although usually found at the surface of the
water, many species have been taken at considerable depths.
Chun[225] states that they are found in countless numbers at depths
of from 100 metres to 1300 metres. The commonest species at
these depths are Sagitta hexaptera and Sagitta serratodentata.
Sagitta bipunctata, according to the same authority, confines itself to
the surface. Whether the change of depth is diurnal, or whether it
has any relation to sexual maturity, or to any other cause, has not
been satisfactorily determined.

The food of the Chaetognatha consists of floating diatoms, Infusoria,

small larvae, and such Copepods as Calanus finmarchicus, and
small Amphipods as Phoxus plumosus.[226] At times they also
devour small larval or post-larval fishes, and owing to their incredible
numbers, they doubtless do considerable damage to sea fisheries. It
is also recorded that they eat one another, and specimens have
been taken which have ingested the whole body of another Sagitta
except the head, which hangs out of the mouth of the eater, and
gives it the appearance of a double-headed monster.[227] It has been
said that they attack hydroid polypes, but here at any rate they do
not have it all their own way. Masterman[228] has figured the apical
group of five polypes of Obelia, three of which are engaged in
ingesting as many young Sagitta.
They exist in incredible numbers; Grassi describes the surface of the
sea at Messina on certain days as being literally covered with them,
and they must form the food supply of numerous animals which prey
upon the pelagic fauna. The immense number of individuals is
probably accounted for to some extent by the fact that they lay eggs
all the year round, and pass through a very short and rapid
development. They are not known to be phosphorescent.

Classification.—The features of the Chaetognatha which have most

systematic value are the size of the adult, the relations of the length
to the breadth, and of the three divisions to one another; the size,
number, and position of the lateral fins, and of the hooks and spines
on the head; the thickness of the epidermis, and the structure of the
olfactory organ; and, finally, the form of the reproductive organs.

Strodtmann,[229] who gives the latest and most complete account of

the species of Chaetognatha, arranges them under three genera,
which he characterises as follows:—

(i.) Sagitta Slabber.—Two pairs of lateral fins, two rows of spines on

the head. The lateral thickening of the epidermis absent or
insignificant.

Under this genus are included nine definite species and five others—
S. gracilis Verrill, S. elegans Verrill, S. darwini Grassi, S. diptera
d'Orbigny, and S. triptera d'Orbigny—whose position, owing to the
inadequacy of their description, is of doubtful validity.
 Fig. 104.—Sagitta hexaptera. Ventral view. × 4. (From Hertwig.) a,
Mouth; b, hooks; c, anterior septum; d, alimentary canal; e,
commissure from the brain to the ventral ganglion; f, ventral
ganglion; g, ovary; h, oviduct; i, posterior septum; j, testis; k,
vesicula seminalis.

The distribution of the other species may be mentioned. S.

hexaptera is the largest Chaetognath known, and reaches in the
adult stage a length of 7 cm. It is very widely distributed, being found
in practically all the temperate and warm seas, usually at the surface
of the water, though at times it is found at a depth of one metre, or
even deeper. S. lyra, Mediterranean, very rare. S. tricuspidata,
widely distributed. S. magna, Mediterranean and Madeiran, living at
the surface. S. bipunctata, the most frequently described form,
smaller than the preceding species, 1-2 cm. in length, widely
distributed, and as a rule living near the coast line. S. serratodentata,
Mediterranean. S. enflata, on the surface of the sea, Mediterranean
and Madeiran. S. minima, a very small species, 1 cm. in length,
Mediterranean. S. falcidens, Atlantic, off the coast of New Jersey.

(ii.) Krohnia Langerhans.—A single lateral fin extending on to both

trunk and tail segment, no lateral epidermal extensions behind the
head, only one row of spines on the head. Trunk longer than the tail.

Krohnia has but two species: K. hamata Möbius, with a length of 3-4
cm., found in the North Atlantic and at considerable depths, 200 to
300 fathoms; and K. subtilis Grassi, 1.5 cm. long, with an
extraordinary slender body and a relatively large head, found at
Messina, but very rare; as a rule only one specimen has been found
at a time.

(iii.) Spadella Langerhans.—A single pair of lateral fins; these are

situated on the tail segment. Behind the head a thickening of the
epidermis extends down each side of the body to the fin, or even
farther. Two rows of spines on the head. Small animals, not longer
than 1 cm.

Fig. 105.—Spadella draco. Dorsal view. × 12. (From Hertwig.) a,

Cephalic ganglion; b, commissure between the cephalic ganglion
and the ventral; c, eye; d, olfactory organ; e, alimentary canal; f,
ovary; g, oviduct (the line goes a little beyond the duct); h, testis; j,
vesicula seminalis.

S. cephaloptera Busch is the smallest species of Chaetognatha,

attaining at most a length of .5 cm. The body is not so transparent as
in other species, and is of a yellowish colour. It has been found from
the Orkney Islands to the Mediterranean. Strodtmann is of the
opinion that the three species S. mariana Lewes, S. batziana Giard,
and S. gallica Pagenstecher differ from the above-named only in
size, or that their description is too indefinite to permit of accurate
characterisation. He recognises three other distinct species: S.
pontica Uljanin, from the Black Sea; S. marioni Gourret, from the
Gulf of Lyons; and S. draco Krohn, Mediterranean and Madeiran,
and from the Canaries.

Much confusion has been introduced into the classification of the

Chaetognatha by Grassi,[230] who calls some—but not all—of what
other writers term Sagitta, Spadella, and vice versâ. The following
table was compiled by Strodtmann,[231] but I have incorporated in it
two species recently described from Amboyna by Béraneck,[232] and
called by him Sagitta bedoti and Spadella vougai respectively:—

CHAETOGNATHA

I. Two pairs of lateral fins; two rows of spines on the head;

slender forms.

(i.) Number of spines in posterior row greater than in anterior.

a. Border of hooks smooth, their point not curved.

α. No interval between the two fins on each side. 3.5 cm.

long; 4-7 anterior spines, 8-11 posterior spines; olfactory
organ lying entirely on the trunk. The anterior nerves of the
ventral ganglion lie close to one another as far as the
head.—Sagitta lyra.

β. A distinct interval between the two fins on each side.

aa. Adult animals large; hooks 6-7; anterior spines 3-4;

posterior spines 5-7; tail ¼ or ⅕ of the total length; lateral
areas relatively larger.—Sagitta hexaptera.

bb. Greatest length 1-2 cm.

 αα. Thickening of the epidermis behind the head;
prominently projecting vesiculae seminales; olfactory
organ very long; hooks 8-10; anterior spines 4-6;
posterior spines 10-15.—Sagitta bipunctata.

ββ. No epidermal thickening; two caeca on the anterior

end of intestine; length 1 cm.; hooks 6-9; anterior
spines 3-4; posterior spines 7-8; point of the hooks
somewhat bent round.—Sagitta minima.

γγ. Epidermis thin; no caeca; hooks 8-9, their ends not

bent; anterior spines 3-4; posterior spines 7-8; length 2
cm.; small head; trunk proportionately thick.—Sagitta
enflata.

δδ. Hooks 11-14, usually 12; length 1.8 cm.; anterior

spines 6-7; posterior spines 18.—Sagitta falcidens.

εε. Hooks 7 on each side; length 1.3 cm.; anterior

spines 8-10, posterior spines 18-22; no olfactory organ.
—Sagitta bedoti.

b. Edge of hooks toothed and their point bent round; hooks

6-8; anterior spines 6-8; posterior spines 10-12; length 1.5
cm.; slender; conspicuously projecting vesiculae seminales.
—Sagitta serratodentata.

(ii.) Number of the spines in posterior row smaller than in

anterior.

a. Anterior spines 3; posterior spine 1; hooks 8; length 3.5

cm.—Sagitta tricuspidata.