

726 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1776. 



between the horny circles, as has been observed by Dr. Pallas, Elench. Zooph. 

 p. 162. " Interjecto quandoque tenui materiae calcareae strato." But I believe 

 no one has ever seen the bark of trees inclosed in the same manner in the inner 

 circles of the wood ; and indeed it is so contrary to the laws of vegetation, that 

 Dr. Pallas has not attempted to account for it, by showing any parallel instances 

 in the ti'ansverse sections of timber. There is another remarkable instance of 

 manner of growing of these animals, in which the upper part of the gor- 

 a flabellum, meeting with an obstruction in growing upwards, grew down- 

 wards over its own fleshy substance, and evidently inclosed and covered over its 

 own reticulated branches, with a continuation of its own flesh and bone. 

 Dr. Pallas, in a note on the growth of the gorgonia, has the following extraor- 

 dinary observation, that a gentleman in Holland is possessed of a gorgonia, 

 which has on the same shrub, the bark partly of a gorgonia verrucosa, and 

 partly of the gorgonia coralloides, without any visible ditterence of the branches ; 

 which he accounts for by comparing it to the growth of vegetables, saying : 

 " So different lichens are often found incorporated in such a manner together, 

 that they might easily be mistaken for one and the same plant." But I think it 

 rather paradoxical to suppose the flesh of one animal to grow on the bones of 

 another. If he examined it attentively, he would have found what we have 

 advanced to be the case. It is not unusual for a gorgonia of one species to grow 

 on the decayed branches of an individual of another, where the soft or fleshy 

 part is already perished ; but the upper or living gorgonia must have its own 

 hard as well as soft parts ; for should there be the fleshy part, and not the bony 

 part, it would belong to the genus of alcyonium, and occasion such another 

 remarkable mistake as this author has already made in his sertularia gorgonia, 

 see Elench. Zooph. p. 188, where he has described an alcyonium, growing on 

 and surrounding the stem and part of the branches of the sertularia frutescens, 

 as a new species of sertularia. This, he says, most closely unites the genus of 

 gorgonia with that of the sertularia ; and to convince me of the truth of what 

 he asserts, he has sent me part of the original specimen, of which fig. g, exhi- 

 bits an exact representation. At a is a magnified figure of this alcyonium, on a 

 piece of the branch of the sertularia. It is of a fleshy substance with warts, 

 having each 1 2 rays ; we have many species of alcyonia from the West-Indies 

 not much unlike this. The reader, by attending to the Doctor's own descrip- 

 tion of his sertularia gorgonia, will soon be convinced of the error, especially 

 when he considers, that the character of a sertularia is that of a branched 

 animal, with the hard parts without, and the fleshy parts within ; and that the 

 gorgonia, on the contrary hath its fleshy or soft parts without, and its bone or 

 hard parts within. 



There is another essential difference hitherto unnoticed, between the growth 



