28 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
2. Supercytis, d’Orbigny. 
Supercytis, d’Orbigny, Palasont. Fran?., p. 1060; Waters, Quart. Journ. GeoL Soc., vol. xl., 
1884, p. 692. 
Fasciculipora (pars), d’Orbigny; Busk, Brit. Mus. Cat., pt. iii. p. 37. 
Character . — Zoarium stipitate ; capitulum expanded, flat or cupped, with numerous 
furcate or trifid fasciculi projecting round the border. Fasciculi compressed, constituted 
of coalesced, almost completely immersed zooecia of varying lengths, all of which open on 
the upper flattened side of the fasciculus or at the extremity. Dorsal surface rounded, 
even, longitudinally striated and minutely punctate. Ooecia (when present) hemi- 
spherical, at the base of the fasciculi, and usually on the upper surface. 
It is not easy to assign its proper family place to this peculiar type, but on the 
whole it would perhaps be more at home among the Fasciculinae or Frondiporidse, than 
elsewhere, the main difference between it and the other members of the group consisting 
in the openings of the zooecia not being altogether terminal but partly on the upper side 
of the lobes or lateral fasciculi, or more rarely on the central area of the capitulum, 
which in one of the forms here described, in the perfect and perhaps more or less 
immature state, is covered with an even, calcareous, minutely punctate lamina, marked 
out into very regular hexagonal areolae, from some of which, towards the border, may be 
seen the slightly projecting orifices of zooecia. In the second species the hexagonal areola- 
tion is apparently wanting, and in this form a few long tubular zooecia project at the base 
of some of the fasciculate lobes. 
In the British Museum Catalogue I have described and figured, under the name of 
Fasciculipora digitata, a species, which as pointed out by Mr. Waters ( loc . cit., p. 692), is 
in all probability identical with M. d’Orbigny ’s Supercytis digitata, but in that specimen, 
which was a good deal worn, the hexagonally areolated, calcareous lamina of the central 
area is absent, and nothing is seen but the open orifices of what might be taken for the 
interstitial cancelli characteristic of the Lichenoporidan group. There can, however, I 
think, be no doubt that they represent the orifices of stunted or undeveloped zooecia, 
because, firstly, towards the base of the digitiform lateral fasciculi many of the areolae 
are actually developed into short zooecial tubes ; and secondly, in none can be traced 
a vestige of the internal ciliary processes which are seen almost universally in true 
interstitial cancelli. Besides these marginal stunted zooecia, there may be seen in all 
parts of the central area similar projecting orifices, which are described by Mr. Waters 
as the ends of central zooecia slightly exserted, and which, as he remarks, give this portion 
the aspect of a Diastopora, such as Diastopora sarniensis. 
