EUDENDRIUM RAMETJM. 81 



STEM (trunk) thick and coarse, composed of many agglu- 

 tinated tubes, of a dark brown colour; PRINCIPAL BRANCHES 

 compound below, but running out into a single tube towards 

 the extremity, much ramified ; BRANCHLETS simple, alter- 

 nate, with a few slight rings at their origins ; POLYPITES 

 vase-shaped, of a reddish colour, with 24 muricatc ten- 

 tacula ; GONOPHORES (male) in umbclliform clusters, 

 (female) oval, borne 011 the polypite or scattered over 

 the stem below it, containing a single yellow ovum. 

 Average height, when full-grown, G inches. 



"THIS is a splendid animal production one of the most 

 singular, beautiful, and interesting among the boundless 

 works of nature. Sometimes it resembles an aged tree, 

 blighted amidst the Avar of the elements, or withered by 

 the deep corrosions of time ; sometimes it resembles a 

 vigorous flowering shrub in miniature, rising with a dark- 

 brown stem, and diverging with numerous boughs, branches, 

 and tAvigs, terminating in so many hydrae, wherein red and 

 yellow intermixed afford a fine contrast to the Avhole." 



So writes Sir John Daly ell with justifiable enthusiasm. 

 The dredger Avill meet with no more beautiful sight than a 

 fine specimen of this zoophyte, bearing, it may be, a thou- 

 sand of the flower-like polypites, and laden Avith its bright- 

 yellow fruit. Its resemblance to an aged tree in miniature 

 is equally striking. 



E. rameum is rooted by a dense, sponge-like mass of 

 fibres, and sometimes attains a height of eight or nine 

 inches. 



The male gonophores as well as the female are developed 

 from the polypite ; but complete atrophy of the latter seems 

 to take place chiefly in the case of the male, and the gono- 

 phores of this sex are almost always met with in an ad- 

 vanced state as umbelliform clusters. The embryo on 

 Issuing from the female sac is a large bright-yellow plauule. 



G 



