Alcyonoid Corals in the British Museum. 443 
of Ammothea; but he does not point out the inconsistency of 
Savigny’s beautiful figures with his generic character. 
MM. Milne-Edwards and Haime, in the ‘ Coralliaires,’ 
have placed Ammothea with the ‘ Aleyoniens nus” and Neph- 
thya with the “Alcyoniens armés;” yet, as has been pointed 
out by MM. Duchassaing and Michelotti (Coral. des Antilles, 
p- 9), they seem to be only synonyms of the same genus. 
Probably these authors were misled by Prof. Ehrenberg’s 
characters of the genera above quoted. 
FILIGELLA. 
Coral free, filiform, simple, slender, rather rigid. Bark 
thin, transparent, formed of a single series of flattened, sub- 
fusiform, elongate spicules placed close together side by side, 
forming a hard coat ; ends blunt, ovate, covered with spicules 
like the stem. The axis hornlike, slender, cylindrical. Po- 
lype-cells short, broad, conical, very far apart, those next 
each other being on different sides of the stem, forming a sub- 
spiral series covered with a single series of close spicules like 
the bark. The cells near each end of the coral are very much 
alike, and the ends of the coral very similar and covered with 
spicules; but there does not appear to be any opening for the 
polype: they are probably the buds by which the coral grows 
in length. 
How the coral lives I am not able to divine. There is no 
appearance of either of the ends being sunk in the sand; and 
there is no expanded disk, which is universal in the group to 
which it belongs. It must live erect, or nearly so; for the 
polypes are placed equally on all sides of the axis. Can it 
climb among the branches of zoophytes or corals ? 
The specimens of this Gorgonoid coral I found among some 
Pennatule dredged up from off Cape Frio, near Rio de Janeiro. 
It is curious as being simple, thread-like, unbranched, and 
rounded off at each end; so that it must have been free. It is 
covered with a single regularly disposed series of small, fusi- 
form, flattened spicules, closely applied to each other. There 
are a small number of very distant, short, broad, conical 
polype-cells, which are also covered with a single series of 
spicules. One of these cells is near each end, and it and the 
end of the coral are covered with spicules like the rest of the 
stem. 
In the structure of the bark and the form and disposition of 
the polype-cells it is very much like the genus Acis, de- 
scribed and figured by Duchassaing and Michelotti (Coral. 
des Antilles, p. 19, t. 1. f. 14,15); but it differs from that genus 
in being unbranched and free. 
3i* 
