VERMfOLOGY. 



affixes itself to the rocks : there are one or two other species des- 

 cribed, but which are not apparently very accurately defined ; some 

 are fasciculate, and ought not therefore, as before observed, to be 

 included in this family of solitary corals. Of those with simple and 

 single stems, the present appears to be the most abundant and the 

 best determined. 



It is a native of the Mediterranean sea, upon the sandy shore 

 of which the detached examples are not unusually found in plenty. 

 Affixed upon its native bed of rocks, the species occurs more 

 sparingly, for as each particular individual or specimen stands apart 

 from the rest, however numerous they may be upon a single stone, 

 they find no protection from each other like those coral bodies which 

 aggregate in groups, and this insulation, in addition to the fragile 

 texture of the coral itself, renders them very liable to be broken by 

 the least commotion of the waves, so that a group of them is rarely 

 seen. The example represented in the annexed plate was found at 

 some depth among the recesses of the rocks below the level of the 

 ebbing tide, and were affixed to, or growing upon a coarse piece of 

 the common red coral, Gorgonia nobilis ; and it may be added in 

 conclusion, that it is chiefly upon the masses of that highly prized 

 article of merchandize that we have usually observed the Madrepora 

 cyathus : many of the detached specimens occur upon fragments of 

 this red coral, to which their base is naturally affixed and with which 

 it appears most frequently to associate. 



