478 Havpon—The Actiniaria of Torres Straits. 
? Rhodactis Howesii, S.-K. 
Rhodactis Howestt, Saville-Kent, 1893, ‘‘ The Great Barrier Reef of Australia,” 
p- 150, chromo pl. i, fig. 2. 
Form.—Column somewhat elevated and conical when expanded, spherical when 
contracted. ‘Tentacles thickly developed throughout the area of the disk. The 
inner circlet, of four or five simple capitate tentacles, is situated immediately 
around the mouth: the remaining tentacles are compound and irregularly palmate 
and pinnatifid, consisting of a central shaft, around the distal half of which from 
five or six to asmany as twenty secondary pinnules may be developed. When 
the tentacles are expanded these pinnules are elongate and subcylindrical, while 
in the contracted condition they are drawn in closely to the central shaft, and are 
distinctly capitate or spheroidal. 
Colour.—In one variety the polyps were liver-brown throughout, excepting the 
tips of all the tentacle-pinnules, which were a brilliant golden green. In the 
second variety the pinnule tips were a light pearl grey. 
Dimensions.—N ot given. 
Habitat.—Both varieties were found growing, massed together in patches of 
considerable size, on the reefs adjacent to the Bay Rock lighthouse, Cleveland 
Bay, near Townsville, Queensland. 
Like Saville-Kent, I am inclined to provisionally place this species under the 
genus Rhodactis, but the original description and the figures are too vague to 
render its identification at all certain. 
ACTINOTRYX, D. & M. 
Actinotryx, Duch. et Mich., 1860, p. 821; Andres (Actinothrix), 1884 
(pars), p. 294. 
Rhodactis, MeMurrich (not of M. Edw.), 1889, Journ. Morph., p. 42; and 
1897, Zoological Bulletin 1. (Boston), p. 120. 
Rhodactide, in which the edge of the oral disk is produced into subtentaculi- 
form crenulations. The disk is covered with short dendritic tentacles. Endo- 
dermal muscle feeble and diffuse or absent. No gonidial grooves. 
The West Indian species of this genus has been investigated by MeMurrich, 
who found that there were a large number (48 to 150) of mesenteries, the majority 
of which were perfect, but there was no regularity in the disposition of the imper 
fect mesenteries; he suggests that normally all the mesenteries should be perfect. 
