MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 5 
essentially in structure with the genus Microptilum Kolliker (Challenger Voy- 
age, Pennatulida, p. 26). 
Another specimen is abnormal; it is 71 mm. long, the peduncle occupying 
40 mm, There are about fifteen transverse rows of polyps on each side, but 
the uppermost ones are small, imperfectly developed, and pale, as if in process 
of restoration after they had been injured or destroyed. The middle rows have 
about five well-developed polyps, resembling those on much larger specimens. 
In life the color of the polyps is dark purplish brown; stem and rachis, pale 
salmon; base of stem, orange. 
This species often has the upper part of the axis, for a greater or less extent, 
denuded, and occupied by one or more specimens of an actinian (Actinauge 
nexilis, Plate VI. figs. 4, 5). Sometimes the denuded place thus occupied * 
is not terminal, but along some part of the rachis. I have seen specimens 
with an actinian only 3 or 4 mm. in diameter attached to a small bare spot 
on the side of the rachis, but its broadly expanded base had already in- 
sinuated itself beneath the coenenchyma, and completely clasped the axis of 
the Balticina. This actinian has, in a remarkable degree, the habit of thus 
clasping the axis of this polyp, and other similar objects, by its base, and the 
edges of the basal disk, when they meet, unite together in a suture. When 
two or more are attached near together, their margins unite where they come 
in contact. 
Specimens dredged by the Blake in 1880 : — 
Station, Fathoms. N. Lat, W. Long. Specimens. 
307 980 41° 29! 45" 65a 104 1 young. 
310 260 39° 59! 16” 70° 18’ 30 1 injured and dwarfed. 
Several specimens were trawled by the U. S. Fish Commission, off Martha’s 
Vineyard, in 160 to 238 fathoms, in 1880, 1881, and 1882. The Gloucester 
fishermen have presented many large and fine specimens (more than 75), some 
of them over two feet long. These came in 57 lots, from the outer slopes of 
the Grand Bank and all the banks off the Nova Scotia coast, in 60 to 400 
fathoms. It was previously known from off Finmark, 240 fathoms; Bergen- 
fjord, 300 fathoms. 
Anthoptilum grandiflorum Verritt. 
Virgularia grandiflora VerriLt, Amer. Jour. Sci., XVII. March, 1879, p. 239. 
Anthoptilum Thomsoni K6tu1KER, Zool. Voy. Challenger, Pennatulida, 1881, p. 13, 
pl. 5, figs. 16-18. 
Anthoptilum grandiflorum, VerriLu, Amer. Jour. Sci., XXIII., 1882, pp. 312, 315. 
Plate I. Fig. 6. 
This large species was dredged by the Blake, off North Carolina, in 603 
and 647 fathoms, in 1880, A specimen, apparently identical, had previously 
been taken by the Blake, off Guadeloupe, in 734 fathoms, in 1878-79. 
