QAZ NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 
endeavour, and sometimes successfully, to get over the edge of the 
reef, and then away. Large specimens of that fine Holothuroid, Mi/- 
leria nobilis, and at intervals a Culcita, would be seen and collected. 
The edges of the gullies actually bristled with the long spines of Dia- 
dema Savignyt. The pain caused by incautiously touching the spines ~ 
of the species of this genus is very great—so great that I have had my 
arm and hand quite benumbed by it for some hours. At one spot, 
near the very edge of deep water, my foot sank in some soft yet brittle 
stuff; and, from the sensation, | knew I had crushed some coral- 
structure that I had not before met with. On examination, this proved 
to be a bunch of the Tubipora, which was growing parasitically on a 
large rock of madrepore; and now that I found the habitat of this 
species, I had no difficulty in finding any quantity of it. Some masses 
were two feet in diameter; but it more usually occurred in irregular 
lumps of about twelve inches in circumference, and from two to four 
inches in height. Very frequently it was covered over with tufts of a 
small green confervoid alga, or of some sessile halichondroid sponge ; 
and under such circumstances the red colour of the polypidom was, of 
course, not conspicuous. The crowns of tentacles, like so many stars, 
were of a greenish colour. Some few pieces were found elevated on a 
stalk, as if the budding of the original individual polyp had advanced 
for some time in an upward and then in an outward direction. The 
polyps were very sensitive, and quickly contracted themselves; nor 
were they, like the polyps of Xenia, at all quick to show themselves 
after they had been once alarmed. 
My residence at Mahé after the discovery of the living animals of 
this coral was too short to admit of my investigating their develop- 
ment; but a very casual examination showed that the tubes were made 
up of spicules coalesced together, which were found free and distinct 
on the upper margin of the tube, and that the tentacles were also 
thickly covered over with minute pale-coloured spicules. 
As the differences between the species of the genus Tubipora are 
not appreciable without an examination of the polyps, perhaps 
there may always be some doubt as to which species is entitled 
to be called muszca; but as the Linnean species came from the Indian 
Ocean, I think I may fairly assume that the Seychelles species is the 
Tubiporva musica, Linn., the Haleyonium rubrum indicum of Rum- 
phius; and if so, I cannot find that the polyps have hitherto been de- 
scribed. In Prof. Kolliker’s short notes on ‘‘ Polymorphism in various 
Genera of Alcyonaria,’”’* he mentions having examined a species of 
Tubipora from the Viti archipelago, which had been preserved in 
spirits. The species is not mentioned, but is probably one of the two 
species described by Dana as from the Fiji or Viti Islands, both of 
which differ specifically, as I take it, from the Indian Ocean species. 
* “ Verhandl. d. phys.-med. Gesellschaft in Wurzburg,” Dec. 28, 1867, and ‘' Zoo- 
logical Record” for 1867, p. 661. 
