DESCRIPTION OF GENERA AND SPECIES. 



ALOYONARIA. 



Order I. GORGONACEA. 

 Section I. HOLAXONIA. 



Family I. Dasygorgid^. 



Chrysogorgidie, Verrill, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zobl., vol. xi. No. 1, p. 21, 1883. 



This family is established for the genera included by Verrill in his family Chryso- 

 gorgidse, as well as for a new genus of simple forms, with unbranched stems. 



The genus Chrysogorgia, Duchassaing and Michelotti, was placed by the authors of the 

 Memoir on the Corals of the Antilles, in their Revue des Zoophytes, &c. (Paris, 1871), 

 among the Gorgonellacese, next to Verrucella, and they mention that the species de- 

 scribed in the Supplement (p. 13) to their Memoir under the same name, but there placed 

 among the Primnoids, is the same as that described on p. 21 of the work. The figures 

 on pis. i. and iv. of the work of these authors, described as Chrysogorgia desbonni, do 

 not appear to belong to the same species, and as the type specimen is no longer to be 

 found in the Museum of Turin, this doubt will not be easily settled. Verrill has, however 

 {loc. cit.), given a new diagnosis of the genus and also re-described Chrysogorgia desbonni, 

 referring also to this genus, as a new species {Chrysogorgia fewkesi), a form referred to 

 as Chry>togorgia desbonni by Pourtales, in which the polyps are "covered with scales 

 like those of the stem [irregular, not imbricated] and closed by eight blunt lancet-shaped 

 scales." 



In the uncertainty as to what species was really described by Duchassaing and 

 ]Michelotti under the name Chrysogorgia desbonni, we prefer to adopt Verrill's genus 

 Dasygorgia, which appears to be the most prominent one of the group, as the type genus 

 of a family, which may be characterised as follows : — 



Colony consisting of a simple or branched axis. Main axis ; calcareous at its base, 

 which latter is either flattened and disc-like, or ramifying into numerous root-like 

 processes ; the fibrous portions of the stems and branches with calcareous jjarticles inter- 

 mixed ; often l)rilliantly iridescent. Coenenchyma ; for the most part thin, sometimes 



(ZOOL. CHALL. EXP. — PART LXIV. — 1887.) S SS 1 



