98 A. E. Verrill — Bermudiun and West Indian Reef Corals. 



Orbicella excelsa Dana. Star Coral. 



Astroea {Orbicella) excelsa Dana, Zooph., p. 212, pi. x, fig. 16, 1846. 

 Heliastrcea ? excelsa Edw. and Haime, Hist. Corall. , ii, p. 478, 1857. 

 Sole7iastra^a excelsa Verrill, iu Dana, Coral Is., ed. 1, p. 380, 1872; ed. 3, p. 



421, 1890. 

 Solenastrcea excelsa (pars) Pourtales, Deep Sea Corals, p. 77, 1871. 



Plate XV. Figure 4. 



Dana's type of this species, in the Boston Society of Natural His- 

 tory, was carefully studied by me a number of years ago, and 

 descriptions were made at that time. The type is apparently slightly 

 beach-worn, bat so little that the natural surface of the coenenchyma 

 and costfe and the summits of the septa are well preserved in most 

 parts, and there is no evidence of post-mortem alteration by infiltra- 

 tion to account for the solidity of the coenenchyma, referred to by 

 Dana, and which is, indeed, quite remarkable in most parts. The 

 coral is very solid and heavy as contrasted with 0. annularis or 

 SolenastrcBa hyades. 



A fragment, apparently of the same specimen, and which appears 

 to have been used b}^ Dana in describing the details, is preserved 

 in the Museum of Yale University. From this the accompanying 

 })hotograph has been made. (PI. xv, fig. 4.) The coral grows 

 in irregular, often upright, lobed or gibbous masses, up to 100 to 

 150""" or more high, but when young it must be encrusting. No. 1729. 



The type specimen is so strongly lobed that the lobules in some 

 places look like incipient branches. But these may possibly be due 

 to the coral growing over the tubes of invading bivalves or annelids, 

 though none can be seen without sections. The calicles are more 

 closely crowded on the lobules, especially at the obtuse summits 

 Avhere they become angular and are separated by thin walls and 

 cellular exotheca. Elsewhere the calicles are nearly circular, scarcely 

 elevated, and separated by exothecal spaces usually about equal to 

 the radii of the calicles, but toward the base often equal to their 

 diameters. The exotheca and walls are very solid in most parts. 



The 24 costae are subequal, thickened, only slightly raised, faintly 

 or almost microscopically granulated; those of adjacent calicles are 



So under Cyphastrcea costata Duncan = C. oblita D. and M. (p. 274, op. cit.) lie 

 saj's : "it was named by Ducliass. and Mich, two years previously ; but they gave 

 so inadequate a diagnosis that their name has no claim to precedence." Yet the 

 latter diagnosis consists of six lines, giving details of the septa, costae, columella, 

 pali, granulations, etc., that were never mentioned by Linne, Ellis and Sol., and 

 ■other early writers on whose briefer diagnoses he bases radical changes in 

 accepted nomenclature. 



