670 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1/55. 



LXI. Of a Curimis, Fleshy, Coral-like Substance.* By Dr. John jllbert 

 Schlosser, M.D., F.R.S. ffith some Observations on it, by Mr. John Ellis, 

 F.R.S. p. 449. 



Having hired some fishermen to dredge, to examine the small English coral, 

 or corallium nostras of Ray's Synopsis, recent in the microscope ; the first time 

 they hauled in the dredge, the Dr. discovered a most extraordinary sea-produc 

 tion surrounding the stem of an old fucus teres : it was of a hardish, but fleshy 

 substance, and more than an inch thick, of a light brown or ash-colour, the 

 whole surface covered over with bright yellow shining and star-like bodies, which 

 induced him to believe it to be an undescribed species of alcyonium. He put it 

 immediately into a bucket of sea-water, expecting every moment that the polypes, 

 which he thought lodged in those little stars, would extend and show themselves, 

 like those of the alcyonium, N" 2 of Ray's Synopsis, commonly called dead 

 man's hand , but after more than half an hour's fixed attention, the vessel lying 

 very quiet all the time, he did not perceive the least appearance of any polypes : 

 on which he brought them to shore in the sea-water, and then, by means of the 

 microscope, discovered every one of those stars to be a true animal, and much 

 more beautiful than any polype, but quite of a different structure. Every one . 

 of those stars is composed of many thin hollow radii, of a pear-shape form, from 

 5 to 12 or more in number, all united intimately at their smaller end : every 

 radius appears broad at the extreme part from the centre, and a little convex in 

 the middle of this raised broad part. When the animal is alive, there appears 

 a small circular hole, which contracts and opens frequently. All the i-adii are of 

 this structure ; but their common centre, which is formed by a combination of 

 all the small converging extremities, exhibits an opening of a circular, oval, or 

 oblong figure, forming a kind of rising rim like a cup, which, when the animal 

 is alive and at rest, contracts and expands itself to many different degrees, with 

 great alertness and velocity, though sometimes it remains a great while expanded, 

 or contracted. In all these holes, the central large one, as well as the smaller 

 ones, which last he takes to be the mouths of the animal, he could not perceive 

 any ten taenia or claws on the outside ; but by looking into them very narrowly, 

 he saw something like very tender little fibres moving at the bottom of their in- 

 sides. By comparing and examining all the various pieces he had collected of 

 this fleshy substance, with its shining stars, he observed that the size and colour, 

 as well as the very figure of these stars, varied greatly ; but the structure of the 

 leaf-like radii, and that of their mouths, and their motions, were perfectly the 

 same in every one individual. Many of these bodies he found so thick and large, 



* The substance here described belongs to the genus alcyonium, and is the Alcyonium Schlosseri of 

 Linneus. 



