306 A. E. Verrill—The Bermuda Islands; Coral Reefs. 
and it has the peculiar forms of spicules characteristic of the latter, 
as shown by a slide of spicules from Esper’s type, sent to me by 
Professor Kélliker. But Esper included several other species under 
the name G. antipathes, as did Linné and most of the other early 
writers. Pallas definitely restricted that name to a large, much 
branched East Indian form, with short and slender terminal branch- 
lets, a stout trunk, with a very black, spirally striated axis, and with 
large, pore-like calicles, quite unlike the present species. Therefore 
it is necessary to adopt another name for this. I am unable to 
identify it with any other of the more recently named West Indian 
species, many of which have been described very imperfectly with- 
out figures.* 
This species branches dichotomously, nearly in one plane, with 
elongated, upright terminal branchlets, from 4 to 8™™ in diameter. 
The ccenenchyma is rather thick, not very friable when dry, nearly 
smooth, with a thin cortical layer of very minute, foliated clubs, 
and short, rough, irregular white spicules, which give the surface, 
under a pocket-lens, a very finely granulated appearance. ‘This 
superficial layer is pale or yellowish white, often with a purple tint 
where the underlying larger spicules show through. The latter are 
rather large, symmetrical, warty spindles, warty heads or spheres, 
and other short thick forms, partly deep purple and partly white in 
color. Surrounding the axis is a close layer of much smaller, short, 
double-whorled, dark purple spindles. 
The calicles are rather small (about .5™™), round, pit-like or pore- 
like, not crowded, the intervals between them exceeding their diam- 
eters, and with their borders slightly sunken, without any fringe 
of larger spicules. The polyps are wholly contractile and apparently 
without any spicules.t The axis is black, compressed at the axils. 
The short, thick, elliptical and subspheerical spicules, abundant in 
the ccenenchyma, are very characteristic of this species. 
* The descriptions of West Indian Gorgonians by Duch. and Michelotti are 
mostly nearly worthless, but some of their general figures are fairly good. 
A set of slides of spicules from a number of their types, sent to me by Pro- 
fessor Kolliker, have been of great assistance to me in determining some of their 
species. The descriptions by Lamarck, Ehrenberg, Dana, and Edwards and 
Haime are also very brief and indefinite, without any account of the spicules. 
The Plexaura antipathes of Ehrenberg is a West Indian species different from 
Esperi, and named P. Ehrenbergii by Kolliker. It may be a form of P. crassa. 
+ If this should prove to be the case, the species should be referred to Plex- 
auropsis ; the polyps are badly decayed in my specimens. 
