405 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



On the Genus Osteocella. By Dr. J, E. Gray, P.E.S. &c. 



Mr. Cliftojt, many years ago, sent, through Dr. Bowerbank, to the 

 British Museum the " backbone taken out of the marine animal in 

 bottle marked ' No. 1.' I caught him or it swimming with great 

 rapidity in shallow water." The bottle never reached the British 

 Museum ; but the backbone did ; and I described it at the end of the 

 ' Catalogue of Sea-Pens or Pennatulidse in the British Museum,' 

 published in 1870, under the name of " Osteocella Cliftoni," but 

 considered very doubtful its belonging to the Pennatulidse. 



The British Museum has lately received a very long slender bone, 

 641 inches long and -^-^ inch broad in its broadest part, which was 

 sent to the Zoological Society by the Hudson's Bay Company, and 

 evidently came from the northern seas, probably from the west 

 coast of America. 



Mr. Carter has kindly examined the Australian specimen sent by 

 Mr. Clifton and the one sent home by the Hudson's Bay Company 

 to the Zoological Society, and finds them, under the microscope, 

 " present the same horny structure, viz. a fibrous trama more or less 

 charged with oval cells or spaces," quite unlike that of Gorgonia and 

 Pennatula, which present a concentric mass of horny laj'ers charged 

 more or less with calcareous crystalline concretions. It is evidently 

 a second species of the same genus, Osteocella ; and it is more to be 

 regretted that the animal sent home by Mr. Clifton to Dr. Bowerbank 

 never reached its destination and was lost to science ; but it is to be 

 hoped that before long we shall receive from West Australia or from 

 the Hudson's Bay Company the animal which produces the Osteo- 

 cella. 



Osteocella, Gray, Cat. of Pennatididse (1870), p. 40. 



Style internal, elongate, calcareous, hard, smooth, with a slightly 

 pearly surface, formed of concentric layers, subcyHndrical, taper- 

 ing at the ends ; the apical (?) end shortest, more rapidly taper- 

 ing, cartilaginous at the tip, the other end longer, more gradually 

 attenuated, ending in a hard calcareous extremity like the rest of 

 the style. Animal or colony of animals free, marine ; otherwise 

 unknown ; most probably like the Pennatulidfe, but the style is 

 harder, more calcareous and polished than any known style belonging 

 to that group, which are generally square, sometimes cylindrical but 

 rarely fusiform in the genus Vm/ularia ; or it may be the long coni- 

 cal bone of a form of decapod cephalopod which has not yet occurred 

 to naturalists, as Mr. Clifton spoke of its being a free marine animal, 

 and it has a cartilaginous apex like the cuttlefish. It is much to be 

 regretted that Dr. Bowerbank did not transmit the animal sent with 

 it to the Museum. 



It is evident that there are two species of animal yielding this kind 

 of bony substance ; — 



