﻿68 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



colour [A. arhorea)'^ The latter is now named Paragorgia 

 arhorea. 



He goes on to say that " the polype cells of Primnoa are 

 membranaceous and covered with calcareous scales, . . . these 

 scales do not cover the whole surface of the cells; on the 

 inner side, next to the stem, there is a part devoid of scales, 

 as if, being less exposed, their protection was not needed. 

 . . . The substance of the cells being membranaceous, they 

 are movable in all directions, as is shown by the different 

 positions in which the cells of P. lepadifera have dried, and 

 hence a mistake was made by Ellis, who described the cells 

 as ' reflexed,' that is, with the mouth downwards, which must 

 have arisen from the position in which his specimens had 

 been hung up to dry, as the weight of the cells would make 

 them fall." 



As the " Goldseeker " specimen was, naturally enough, 

 not " hung up to dry," it may be interesting to note that 

 while the great majority of the polyps were reflexed, a few 

 among them had the mouth pointing upwards. They are so 

 stiffly encased in scales that one finds it difficult to believe 

 that they could possibly turn upon their bases of insertion. 

 It is surely a growth-variation. 



In his brief paper. Stokes refers to his figures of a Primnoa 

 rossii, n. sp., which Sir James Clark Eoss had obtained from 

 a great depth (see his Voyage to the Southern and Antarctic 

 Regions, vol. i. p. 334). This new species seems to have 

 been left undescribed, but Dr J, Versluys notes in his 

 splendid monograph on the Siboga Primnoidse that it was 

 perhaps the same as Gray's Hookerella loulchella, which was 

 also left practically undescribed. A specimen in the British 

 Museum, labelled Hookerella, seemed to Versluys to agree 

 closely with his Thouarella tydemani, but a comparison of the 

 polyps was not made. Thus, so far as we know, Primnoa 

 reseda remains the only species of its genus. 



In 1861 E. Grube described "a new coral" — Lithoprimnoa 

 arctica — from the Norwegian coast, in 70° N. lat. This is, 

 again, Primnoa reseda, Pallas. I have not been able to con- 

 sult Grube's somewhat inaccessible paper, but there is a 

 notice of it in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 



