296 OX HETEROPSAMMIA MICHELINII, 



Pacific as far as New Caledonia. In the latter place it would 

 seem to be very common. 



The species which I described the year before last as Heterop- 

 sammia elliptica, (See Proc. Linn. Soc, Yol. II., p. 339. PI. 6., 

 fio\ 3a, b.) I am now convinced should be placed with BalanoplnjUia. 

 Though the peculiar vermiculate exterior is very much like 

 Heteropsammia yet the coral is not always parasitic and never in 

 the way described in Lolopsammia Miclielini. The species must 

 be known therefore as Balanophjllia cUiptica. 



It remains now to enquire what is the nature of those 



perforations which Mr. Edwards regarded as the mouth of a shell 



and on which opinion he was followed by Dr. J. E. Gray. In 



the Natural History Eeview for January, 1862, (No. V., p. 78.) 



I find a notice of these corals by the surgeon of II.M.S. " Icarus." 



His paper is entitled " Observations on some Australian and 



Feegeean Heterocyathi and their parasitical Sipunculus. By 



John Denis Macdonald, E.N., F.E.S." He says that in two 



separate casts of the lead, on the Bellona Eeef, Lat. 21°, 51'., S., 



Long. 159°, 28', he obtained specimens of living polypi, referable 



as Dr. Gray informed him to the genus Heteroeyathus,* and on 



comparing them with others previously collected in the Feejee 



Group he found that they were diiferent species of the same 



genus. He describes the coral as simple, free depressed, broad 



and flattened at the base, becoming smaller towards the calice 



which is more or less oval in figure and comparatively shallow ; 



the columella was spongy ; the septa were spongy or minutely 



granular exteriorly, not compact within. In the specimens taken 



at Bellona shoal, the calice was distorted with a central construction 



as though a process of fission was going on. In one specimen 



the opposite margins had met. The external surface was covered 



with minute granulations, disposed in broken longitudinal lines, 



* From this it would appear that Gray had not seen M. Edwards' correction 

 of his yenus. 



