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MADREPORARIA OF THE DEEP SEA. 
LOPHOHELIA PROLIFERA, Pallas, sp. 
The corallum is tall, and either dendroid or boat-shaped; and the corallites often 
unite laterally. 
The corallites are long, turbinate, subturbinate, cylindrical, claviform, and cyathiform, 
or short. ‘They are often deformed. 
The wall is finely granular. 
The costa may exist as crests here and there, as very fine curved lines, or they may 
be absent. 
The wall is thick, especially inferiorly. 
The calicular margin may be circular, elliptical, or deformed in outline; it may be 
open, inverted, everted, or not. 
The calicular fossa may be very deep, or may be crossed by tabule at different depths. 
The septa are never in three, four, or five perfect cycles in six systems. ‘The number 
of the larger septa varies, as does the amount of the exsertness, projection outwards, 
and breadth. 
The septal lamine are unequal, larger and thicker at the margin than elsewhere, and 
they approach each other at the bottom of the fossa. 
The septal ends are usually not in contact; but occasionally some trabecul join them 
low down. 
The tabule are thick and variable in their position. 
The dissepiments are small, and rarely extend beyond the interseptal loculi. 
The height of the corallum and the size of the corallites vary greatly. 
The variability of the group of forms included in this species is extreme. On one 
stem corallites which answer to Lophohelia prolifera, Pallas, sp., L. anthophyllites, Ellis 
& Solander, sp., L. subcostata, Ed. & H., L. affinis, Pourtales, L. defrancei, Defrance ', 
and L. stoppiniana, Seg.’, can be observed; and other stems, or rather independent 
corals, consist of corallites possessing the special attributes of one of the species only. 
The coalescence of the corallites varies in amount, as does the thickness and weight 
of the corallum. 
In some large corallites, with calices measuring 4 inch in breadth, there are four 
cycles and some septa of the fifth; but usually in calices of less size the fourth cycle is 
incomplete. 
Two specimens were dredged up in the Mediterranean (No. 58, depth 266 fathoms), 
between Sicily and the African coast ; and thus the coral must be received as one of the 
fauna of the Mediterranean, although previously doubt had been cast upon it. 
Its usual habitat is in the North Sea, the North Atlantic, and off the French and 
Spanish coasts ; and it frequents rocky ground. 
? Fossil species. 
