20 
Those of the third cycle unite with those of the second just where the paliform 
processes of the latter arise. Those of the other cycles are low sharp slightly 
erenulate ridges, which gradually end low down in the fossa. 
The corallum is white with a brownish tinge externally. 
Off Pedro Bank (Laccadive Sea), 636 fms. 
Subfamily Turbinoline, Edw. & H. 
vii. DEsMoPpHYLLUM, Ehrenberg, Edw. & H. 
13. Desmophyllum vitreum, nu. sp. Pl. ii. figs. 2, 20-6. 
Encrusting dead corals in colony-like masses. 
The corallum is snow-white with a glistening external surface. From an 
encrusting base a stout cylindrical slightly-curved stalk of varying length arises 
and rather suddenly expands into a turbinate calyx, with a spreading lip, the 
outline of which varies from circular to narrowly-elliptical. Sharpish costz, 
corresponding with the first three cycles of septa, are present on the calicular 
wall only, not on the stalk: the surface between them is generally rippled. 
The septa, like the thecal wall, are of a compact porcelain-like texture, 
and their surfaces are finely and sharply granular. They are in six systems 
and four complete cycles. Those of the first two cycles are about equal in size, 
and are large and strongly exsert: they simply meet together and fuse at the 
bottom of the cup, with hardly any “callus,” and sometimes they do not meet 
at all, Those of the third cycle are a good deal larger and more exsert than 
those of the fourth: they never fuse with their predecessors, and often descend 
below the point where the latter fuse. Those of the fourth cycle are small and 
little exsert, but they descend deep into the cup. 
Though the large septa of the first two cycles are described as about equal, 
no two are of quite the same size, and, in an unbroken specimen, one of them 
may be found jutting up far above the other eleven. 
It is useless to give measurements of such a variable form; an average 
specimen, picked out at random, is 35 millim. high and has a circular calyx 
27 millim. in diameter. 
Hundreds of specimens were dredged, along with the Caryophyllia para- 
doxus before described, off the Travancore coast, at 430 fms. 
This species appeared to me to be as closely as possible related to D. eburneum 
Moseley, dredged by the “Challenger” off Patagonia at 345 fms.; but 
Mr. Jeffrey Bell, who has very kindly compared specimens, says “ I cannot 
think that your Desmophyllum is the same as D, eberneum...... but I am not 
quite sure that it is not D. ingens.” 
