93 



Color. The colony (dried) is dull sandy brown. The axis is black and the spicules are 

 colorless. 



Some of the specimens of this species are among the largest in the collection. One from 

 Stat. 313 is 55 cm. high and has a spread of 43 cm. 



*8. Hetcrogorgia retiailata new species. (Plate XYII, figs. 2, 2«; Plate XXII, fig. 17). 



Ternate, collected by the Dutch North New Guinea Expedition, 1903. Aug. 1903. 

 Pulu Missa near Flores, de SlSO don. 



Colony (dried) .strictly flabellate and reticulate, 24.5 cm. in height and 28 cm. wide, 

 growing on a pearl oyster shell. The main stem is 5 mm. in diameter near the base, but soon 

 becomes flattened like the branches, the larger diameter being at a right angle with the plane 

 of the colony. From 2 to 3 cm. from its base it bears lateral branches, and above this soon 

 looses its identity by breaking up into several vertical branches. These, and the laterals, spread 

 in a fan-shaped form, radiating toward the periphery of the colony and sending off numerous 

 short curved branchlets with swollen ends, except where they anastomose with other branches 

 to form a reticulate pattern. The radiating branches are all laterally compressed so that they 

 present their lesser diameter when the colony is viewed from in front. Their diameters are 

 4X 2.2 mm. The average distance between twigs is 4 mm. The calyces are distributed on all 

 sides of the stem and branches, but are less numerous on the front and back of the proximal 

 parts, and more numerous on the distal parts of the colony, where they are thickly crowded 

 and usually contiguous. 



The individual calyces are rather low Verrucae, i mm. in diameter and less than .5 mm. 

 in height. They are probably shrunken considerably in the dried specimen, and the calycular 

 apertures are all widely open. The walls are filled with spicules that are stellate or multiradiate 

 in form. They often appear superficially as irregular disks with jagged edges which sometimes 

 imbricate. The calyx margin is surrounded by a number of jagged lobular prominences, or 

 edges of these disks. 



The polyps are retractile. The op'erculum has sunk to the bottom of the calyces, and 

 is of the ordinary muriceid type, with two long curved spindles lying along the dorsal surface 

 of each tentacle. 



Spicules. Stars, multiradiate forms and disks with irregular jagged edges predominate. 

 Double stars and double crosses are also found with an occasional ordinary spindle. 



Color. The specimen is dull ashy brown, in the dried state. The axis is dark brown 

 and the spicules colorless. 



This species is evidentl\- allied to Hetcrogorgia raiiiosa T. and H., but differs from it 

 in color, in the marked compression of the branches, and in the fact that ordinary spindles 

 are abundant in H. rainosa, forming a conspicuous feature on the slide of spindles, while they 

 are rare in H. reticulata. 



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