104 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
ing made up of exceedingly thin almost papery leaves which 
are lobate and frilled at the edges; the most fragile and deli- 
eate foliaceous coral that I have ever seen. One perfect colony 
eame through intact and is before me as I write. Originally it 
was a delicate light gray with a faint reddish flush suggesting 
a very light lilac, lightening to almost white at the frilled 
edges. The upper surfaces of the broadly lobed leaves contain. 
the small corallites which are in little pockets or rather bracket- 
like pouches facing upward. They do not occur in regular 
linear arrangement as in other species of Agaricia, but are 
scattered in groups some distance from the frilled edges of the 
leaves. 
This is probably the most interesting and most beautiful coral 
secured by us at Barbados, and the specimen referred to will 
have a place in the Invertebrate Hall of our museum. 
The fauna of Shoal Bank seems quite different from that of 
the other localities where we dredged. It was evidently par- 
ticularly well adapted to the Agaricia just described, many 
fragments of the delicate foliaceous colonies coming up in the 
dredge, but the fragility is so extreme that only a single perfect 
specimen was secured. The ground was also rich in comatulids, 
several species being found that we did not encounter else- 
where, as well as strange ophiurians, sponges, ete. Unfortu- 
nately, we got into difficulty in the choppy sea and tide-rips 
over this submarine ridge and were in serious danger of a dis- 
aster owing to the dredge catching on the bottom and the sud- 
den strain ripping things up generally. It being near the end 
of our stay at Barbados, we were unable to revisit this ground. 
Three species of Orbicella were secured, O. annularis, O. cav- 
ernosa, and another species not yet identified. Oculina verru- 
cosa and O. dispersa were also found, the latter at Station 36. 
A species superficially resembling O. dispersa is represented 
by a very handsome colony in the form of a dense clump of slen- 
der branches nine and one-half inches in diameter and six inches 
high. There are hundreds of these branches closely aggregated 
so that their tips form a rounded head. They are very slender 
and fragile, forked at the ends, the terminal branches being 
elub-shaped. The corallites are usually less than two mm. in 
diameter, closely appressed together near the ends of the 
