chambers. The pali are almost always small and deep-seated, and they are of 
every variety of form—thick and spongy, thin and lamelliform, or twisted and 
granular. But it is very uncommon to finda crown of pali: more often the 
pali are mere little ragged lobules of the septa in question, and still more often 
they cannot be distinguished at all. Even when there are well formed pali, 
they may be absent from some of the chambers. 
The columella is generally very deep-seated, and is almost as variable 
as the pali: in a few cases a true columella cannot be distinguished ; in many 
cases it consists of a single loosely-coiled process, or of two such processes ; 
but in most cases it is a good-sized mass, consisting of loosely-connected, 
irregularly-twisted, often ragged and granular, processes. 
The outer surface of the thecal wall varies greatly in sculpture: some- 
times it is only finely striated and granular, but more often fine sharply-salient 
but discontinuous cost, corresponding to the large septa, are present down to 
the point where the calyx joins the stalk. 
Colours of the “living” corallum: thecal wall, from the point of junction 
of the stalk, light brown, gradually darkening to cinnamon near the calicular 
margin. The soft parts, in spirit specimens, are dull yellowish. 
The zoophytes appear to be extremely prolific, and they thickly encrust 
dead corals in colony-like masses connected by copious epitheca. Very often 
a young coral is found attached like a bud to the stalk or calyx of a full-grown 
one, but, of course, without any internal connexion. 
A vast number of specimens were dredged off the Travancore coast, at a 
depth of 430 fms., along with almost as much Desmophyllum and Solenosmilia 
and large masses of Lophohelia. 
ii, ACANTHOCYATHUS, Edw. & H. 
6. Acanthocyathus grayi, Edw. & H. 
Acanthocyathus grayi, Hdw. and H., Ann. Sci. Nat., Zool., ser. 3, vol. ix. p. 293, pl. ix. fig, 2, 1848; and Hist. 
Nat. Corall. IT. 22. 
A specimen dredged off the Andamans, at 185 fms., seems to me to be 
undoubtedly referable to this species, with the description of which it agrees 
completely, and from the figure of which it differs only in having longer 
spines, 
I may mention that in the Indian Museum there are several specimens, 
from the Andamans (depth unknown) and from off the Arakan coast (20-70 
fms.), which are almost certainly this species, and that in two of them the 
spines of the lateral coste are all flattened and fused together to form a pair of 
large wings to the calicle. 
