124 CORALS 



red and chrome yellow, the two colours being variously 

 disposed. 



When dried the coral is very brittle, so that it is difficult 

 to obtain a perfect specimen for a museum, but it is known 

 that the species may attain to a height of 3 feet and liave 

 a main stem half an inch or more in diameter. 



On the reefs and in shallow water of the Indian Ocean 

 a dwarf species, Melitodes variabilis, is found which exhibits 

 very remarkable variation in the colour schemes. For 

 example, on one reef in an atoll of the Maldive Archipelago 

 the nodes were all red, but the internodes were grey or red 

 or pale yellow or salmon coloured. From other localities 

 in the same archipelago specimens were found with yellow 

 nodes and red internodes, with grey nodes and grey inter- 

 nodes, with red nodes and orange internodes, and many other 

 variations. 



The Alcyonarian flexible corals with an unjointed axis 

 present such a great variety of form and minute structure 

 that they are now divided up by the systematists into a verv 

 large number of genera and species. To attempt to describe 

 the characters by which even the genera are distinguished 

 from one another so as to give the reader a guide to the 

 determination of the generic names would be a task that 

 would take far more space than can be allotted to this 

 group of corals. A few well-known genera have been 

 selected, therefore, w^hich will illustrate some of the more 

 important characters of the families they represent. 



The word Gorgonia as applied to flexible corals of some 

 kinds is of very ancient origin and may have been derived 

 from the Gorgones, the mythical ladies whose hair was 

 said to be entwined with serpents ; but it is quite impossible 

 to determine whether the classical writers applied the name 

 to any one kind of flexible coral or to any kind of marine 

 product having a black horny axis. The same sort of 

 errors and myths gathered round the Gorgonians as round 

 the red coral, and it is evident that the}'- were regarded as of 

 the same nature as Corallium. 



Pliny ^ says " Gorgonia nihil aliud est quam curalium ; 



1 xxxv'ii. 10. 164. 



