Dr. J. E. Gray on a new Japanese Coral. 263 



reduced to a ring of bristles, and t^e stigma is also small ; 

 but by the remarkable arrangements above noticed in the hard 

 and completely syngenesious anthers (syngenesious from an 

 early stage in the bud) and in the style, the pollen is ejected 

 in small quantities at a time on the exact spot in the insect on 

 which it should be placed for transportation to the stigma of 

 another flower, and is swept with equal precision from that 

 spot by the stigma of the next flower he visits. 



XXXI. — Note on a new Japanese Coral (Isis Gregorii), and 

 on Hyalonema. By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.K.S. &c. 



Mr. Bradley Gregory, the Surgeon of H.M.S. ' Eattler,' has 

 sent to Mr. Carruthers, for the British Museum, a fragment of 

 a coral which appears to be new to science. Mr. Gregory ob- 

 serves : — " The man who was sent to procure specimens of the 

 Hyalonema from Inosima brought back in addition a large 

 branch of what at first appeared like the plant that grows in 

 the marshes, called Equisetum ; but on close inspection it was 

 found solid and smooth like glass, with joints and secondary 

 branches coming from it. The gentleman who was kind 

 enough to show me this thing tore ofl" a small branch, which I 

 have sent to you lashed on to a piece of bamboo." 



The specimen sent indicates a new specie* of Isidince. The 

 branch is very long, slender, of nearly equal thickness almost 

 throughout the whole of its length, only very slightly and 

 gradually tapering just at the tip. It is formed of about fifty 

 or fifty-one elongated slender joints united by a short but 

 distinct pale brown articulation. The joints are very similar 

 in length, being rather more than half an inch long ; but some- 

 times there is a shorter one interjected in various parts of the 

 series. The branch is about 27 inches long^ and ^ inch in 

 diameter ; the horny internodes are very much shorter than the 

 joint, and about the same diameter. 



Unfortunately the specimen does not show what was the 

 general distribution of the branches. This may be verticillate, 

 as Mr. Gregory compares the coral to an Equisetum ; and 

 the elongated branches are like the slender ones of some 

 of the species of that genus. The specimen does not afford 

 any means of determining if the branches arise from the cal- 

 careous joints, or from the homy internodes of the stem, which 

 distinguishes the two genera Isis and Mopsea. 



Waiting the receipt of more perfect specimens, I propose to 

 call the coral, provisionally, Isis Gregorii^ after the gentleman 

 who so liberally sent it to the British Museum. 



