MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. od 
from the surface. Calicles elongated, tubular, often expanded at the end, and 
armed with eight long, projecting, spiniform spicula, or clusters of spicula, 
which are enlarged and bent at the base, but not lamelliform; sides of the 
‘calicles usually eight-ribbed, and covered with fusiform spicula. 
This genus has been more or less confounded with Paramuricea by several 
authors. To that genus it is closely allied, differing chiefly in the longer 
calicles and their longer marginal spines, and in having slender fusiform 
spicula without the irregular, flat, branched forms, characteristic of Para- 
muriced. 
Besides the species herein described, this genus includes Acanthogorgia 
hirsuta Gray, the type of the genus, recorded by Johnson from off Madeira, 
‘and A. Schramit (Duch. & Mich. sp.) from the West Indies. Other species 
wrongly referred to the genus by Johnson and Pourtalés are mentioned under 
Paramuricea. 
Acanthogorgia armata VERRILL. 
Acanthogorgia armata Verritt, Amer. Jour. Sci., XVI, 1878, p. 876; XXIV., 1882, 
p. 364. 
Plate III. Figs.1, la, 1b, 2, 2a, 2b. 
Coral slender, flexible, much and irregularly branched, bushy and shrub- 
like, often with the branches somewhat in a plane, and occasionally uniting. 
Ceenenchyma thin, filled with rather small, white, often curved, warted, fusiform ~ 
spicula, which do not project from the surface in spine-like points. Calicles 
usually very much elongated, the length often six to eight times the diameter, 
clavate, or capitate, smallest near the base and suddenly enlarged near the 
summit, which is surmounted by eight groups of long, divergent, sharp, spine- 
like spicula, with their projecting points nearly smooth; sides of calicles with 
eight low ridges or angles covered with elongated, warty spicula, having an 
irregular, chevroned arrangement, but usually not projecting from the surface 
as spines, or but slightly so. 
In a few cases marked variations have occurred in the form of the calicles 
on different branches of the same specimen (see Figs. 1,1a,1b). In these 
cases, on part of the branches they are of normal shape and size (Fig. 1), while 
on other branches they may be much shorter, cylindrical, or even swollen in 
the middle and not enlarged at the end (Fig. 1b); but on still other branches 
they may have intermediate forms (Fig. 1a). On the specimen from which 
these figures were made the calicles were rougher or more spinose along the 
sides than usual. 
Height of one of the original examples, 200 mm. (about 8 inches); breadth, 
150 mm. (about 6 inches); length of calicles, 5 to*8 mm.; their diameter at 
base, .8 to 1 mm.; at summit, 1 to 1.5mm. Much larger examples have since 
been obtained, some of them 1500 mm. (about 20 inches) high, and half as 
broad. 
