MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 5 



essentially in structure with the genus Mkroptilum Kulliker (Challenger "Voy- 

 age, Pennatulida, p. 2G). 



Another specimen is abnormal; it is 71 mm. long, the peduncle occupying 

 40 mm. There are about fifteen transverse rows of polyps on each side, but 

 the uppermost ones are small, imperfectly developed, and pale, as if in process 

 of restoration after they had been injured or destroyed. The middle rows have 

 about five well-developed polyps, resembling those on much larger specimens. 



In lU'e the color of the polyps is dark purplish brown; stem and rachis, pale 

 salmon; base of stem, orange. 



This species often has the upper part of the axis, for a greater or less extent, 

 denuded, and occupied by one or more specimens of an actinian (Actinauge 

 ncxilis, Plate VI. figs. 4, 5). Sometimes the denuded place thus occupied 

 is not terminal, but along some part of the rachis. I have seen specimens 

 with an actinian only 3 or 4 mm. in diameter attached to a small bare spot 

 on the side of the rachis, but its broadly expanded base had already in- 

 sinuated itself beneath the cojnenchyma, and completely clasped the axis of 

 the Balticina. This actinian has, in a remarkable degree, the habit of thus 

 clasping the axis of this polyp, and other similar objects, by its base, and the 

 edges of the basal disk, when they meet, unite together in a suture. When 

 two or more are attached near together, their margins imite where they come 

 in contact. 



Specimens dredged by the Blake in 1880 : — 



Several specimens were trawled by the U. S. Fish Commission, off Martha's 

 Vineyard, in 160 to 238 fathoms, in 1880, 1881, and 1882. The Gloucester 

 fishermen have presented many large and fine specimens (more than 75), some 

 of them over two feet long. These came in 57 lots, from the outer slopes of 

 the Grand Bank and all the banks off the Nova Scotia coast, in 60 to 400 

 fathoms. It was previously known from off Finmark, 240 fathom.s; Bergen- 

 fjord, 300 fathoms. 



Anthoptilum grandiflorum Verrill. 



Virgularia grandiflora Verrill, Amer. Jour. Sci., XVII., March, 1879, p. 239. 

 Anthoptilum Thomsoni Kolliker, Zool. Voy. Challenger, Pennatulida, 1881, p. 13, 



pi. 5, figs. 16-18. 

 Anthoptilum grandiflorum, Verrill, Amer. Jour. Sci., XXIIL, 1882, pp. 312, 315. 



Plate I. Fig. 6. 



This large species was dredged by the Blake, off North Carolina, in 603 

 and 647 fathoms, in 1880. A specimen, apparently identical, had previously 

 been taken by the Blake, off Guadeloupe, in 734 fathoms, in 1878-79. 



