THE ANNALS 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 56. AUGUST 1872. 



XL — Antipathes arctica, a new Species of Black Coral (Anti- 

 pathidse) from the Polar Seas. By Dr. C. LiJTKEN*. 



A LITTLE before the commencement of the ilhiess which at 

 the end of last year carried off M.C. S. M. Oh-ik, Comicillor of 

 Justice and Director of Greenland trade, and formerly Inspector 

 in North Greenland, thus inflicting upon science a serious loss 

 by depriving us of a man who had striven with much zeal and 

 great perseverance to elucidate the natural history of Green- 

 land, especially in collecting its zoological and pala^ontological 

 objects for our museums, that gentleman brought to me at the 

 museum a black coral which, as he knew with certainty, was 

 found in the stomach of a shark (i. e. a sea-hound, Scymmis 

 microcephalus) in Rodebayf, about two miles north of Jakobs- 

 liavn, in North Greenland, by M. K. Fleischer. This dis- 

 covery is of great interest in many respects. It increases our 

 knowledge of the Greenland fauna with a genus, and, indeed, 

 with a family, which had not previously been included in it ; 

 nay, what is more, this family was previously known only 

 from warm or very warm seas : north of the Mediterranean J 



* Translated by W. S. Dallas, F.L.S., from the 'Oversigt over det Kongl. 

 Danske Vidensk. Selsk. Forhandl.' 1871, pp. 18-26. 



t Rink calls it " Rodebay." I do not know which of these denomina- 

 tions is the right one. 



\ The text was already printed when Professor Wyville Thomson had 

 the kindness to inform me that Antipatharia had been found in the 

 British expeditions for the exploration of the great depths by means of 

 the dredge, and consequently in a part of the Atlantic situated between 

 the polar seas and the warm seas which, imtil recently, formed the 

 northern limit of the known Antipatharia. 



From the Mediterranean we know with certainty apparently five spe- 

 cies — namely, Antipathes larix, Esper, subpinnata, Ellis, and dichotoma, 

 Pall., Leiopathes glaberrima (Esper) and Gerardia Lamarchii (3 . Haime) ; 

 whilst I regard it as very doubtful whether Antipathe.s scojyaria, Lamk., 

 and Cirripathes spiralis (Pall.) also occur in the Mediterranean, as is 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser.4. Vol.x. 7 



