Mr. J. Y. Johnson on a Species of Acanthogorgia. 75 
Eggs.” The flesh of the adult bird of some species has been pro- 
nounced to be good eating. 
DescriPTion OF A SeconD Species or ACANTHOGORGIA (J. 
E. Gray) rrom Mapeira. By James Yate JOHNSON. 
In the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society’ for 1857, p. 128, 
was printed a description of a new genus of Gorgoniade by Dr. J. 
E. Gray, founded on a specimen in the British Museum, the habitat 
of which was unknown. ‘The genus was named by its describer 
Acanthogorgia, and the specimen was figured, by an inadvertence, in 
the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society’ for 1851 (Radiata, Pl. 
III. fig. 2), under the name of Nidalia occidentalis, instead of Acan- 
thogorgia hirsuta, Gray. I am now in a position to state that the 
native place of this curious Black Coral (of which no notice has been 
taken by M. Milne- Edwards in his work on Coralliaria) is Madeira ; 
for I possess one specimen, and have seen others, obtained from deep 
water near that island. Last winter a specimen of Black Coral fell 
into my hands (also obtained from the same coast), which, though 
evidently belonging to the genus dcanthogorgia, appeared on exami- 
nation to be specifically distinct from the species previously described. 
I now proceed to lay before the Society a description of this second 
species, which I have named, in honour of the founder of the genus 
to which it belongs, 
ACANTHOGORGIA GRAYI. 
Colour dark brown. Branching irregularly, with a tendency to 
grow in one plane. Branches free, slender, flexible, having an average 
diameter of one-seventh of an inch; the thickest part of the stem 
near the base has a diameter of three-tenths of an inch; the ends of 
the branches are rounded, and thicker by one-half than the neigh- 
bouring portion of the branch. Axis pale brown, very slender, that 
of the smaller branches, when dry, being not more than the twentieth 
Acanthogorgia Grayt. 
of an inch in diameter. When the coral has been a few days out of 
the water, the axis shrinks from the bark, and remains distinct in the 
