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REPORT on the ALCYONARIA of the L. M. B. C. 



DISTRICT. 



By Professor Herdman, D.Sc. 



Only two species belonging to the Alcyonaria — the common 

 Alcyonium digitatum and the rare Sarcodictyon catenata — 

 can be recorded here. None of the British Pennatulida, 

 although they all occur on the West Coast of Scotland, 

 have yet been found in this neighbourhood. 



ALCYONARIA, 

 ALCYONIDA. 



Family I. — CoRNULARiDiE. 



Sarcodictyon catenata, Forbes (PI. II, figs. 1 and 2). 



Several colonies of this rare species were dredged in 

 August, 1885, between Port St. Mary and Spanish Head, 

 Isle of Man, from a depth of twenty fathoms ; bottom, 

 Nullipores. They all belong to the red variety, and one 

 of them shows that widening of the stolon in places to 

 form expansions upon which the polypes are grouped in 

 twos and threes, which Forbes supposed to be characteristic 

 of his Sarcodictyon agglomeratum.* The colonies vary in 

 size from three to nearly thirty polypes. They agree in all 

 respects with the Scotch specimens described in my paper 

 on, Sarcodictyon referred to below. 



In specimens of Sarcodictyon catenata, dredged from 

 Loch Fyne, I had never succeeded in inducing the polypes 

 to expand in captivity, but in the case of a large colony 

 obtained in Lamlash Bay, in the autumn of 1884, and again 



* See Forbes, Trans. Roy. Soc, Edin., vol. xx, p. 307, 1853; and 

 Herdman, Proc. R. Phys. Soc, Edin., vol. viii, p. 31, 1883. 



