Miscellaneous. 79 



the trunk ; there is a dark hrown streak across the temple. The 

 belly is greyish, and finely and irregularly speckled with brown. 



inches, lines. 



Total length 14 3 



Length of the head 5 



Greatest width of the head 3 



Length of the trunk 10 



Length of the tail 3 10 



The maxillary teeth are of moderate size, of nearly equal length, 

 in a continuous series, and entirely smooth. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Observations on the Corymbose Madrepores. 

 By M. A. Valenciennes. 



One of our most elegant forms of Madrepore is that called Madre- 

 pora corymbosa by Lamarck. Reducing the characters of the genus 

 to those now fixed by Ehrenberg, and studying the fine specimens 

 contained in the Museum at Paris, the author has found that Lamarck 

 united, under the name of Madrepora corymbosa, at least three di- 

 stinct species : one hollowed out into a very shallow cup, brought 

 by Peron and Lesueur in 1803, for which he retains Lamarck's 

 name ; a second, spread out in the form of a fan, which was obtained 

 by the celebrated Professor of the Garden of Plants at the sale of 

 the collection of Madame de Bois-Jourdain, which came from the 

 Caribbean Sea, together with the first specimen ever seen in France 

 of the recent Encrinus (Encrinus caput-Medusce) . To this species 

 the author gives the name of Madrepora Jlabilis : it is characterized 

 by the shortness of the branches, which are less slender than those 

 of M. corymbosa, Lamk. and Val. The third species, more spread 

 out and spinose, is named M. corymbitis, Val. ; it appears to be 

 intermediate between the two preceding species. 



M. Milne-Edwards, in his work on Corals, has added a fine species 

 of these Madrepores, to which he has given the name of Madrepora 

 flabelliformis : it is from the seas of Vanikolo ; the specimen in the 

 Paris Museum was obtained by MM. Hombron and Jacquinot in the 

 voyage of Admiral d'Urville. This species is distinguished from the 

 West Indian one by its closer and longer branches. 



The Museum of Natural History has just acquired four new spe- 

 cies of these corymbose Madrepores, obtained at Marseilles by M. L. 

 Rousseau, one of the assistants in the Museum. These beautifully 

 preserved corals show, in a more certain manner than could have 

 been suspected from the specimens deposited in our collections from 

 the time of Lamarck, that the species of these corymbose Madre- 

 pores obtained from the American seas are different from those of 

 the great Indian Ocean, although preserving an analogous form in 

 allied species. To establish this fact, the author first adduces the 

 species to which he gives the name of M. radicans, of which the 



