19,2 Light: Notes on Philippine Alcyonaria 249 
Lituaria kiikenthali sp. nov. 
Type. — No. C. 682 in the zoological collection, College of 
Liberal Arts, University of the Philippines; collected in Pori 
Galera Bay on the north coast of Mindoro Island, by 
L. E. Griffin. 
The rather slender, club-shaped colony, from 80 to 120 
millimeters in length, ends in a slender stalk, from 5 to 12 
millimeters in maximum diameter and from one-half to three- 
fourths as long as the rachis. The stalk shows no distinct 
swollen area. The rachis increases in size from the stalk to 
the blunt upper end. At or near its tip it reaches a maximum 
diameter of from 10 to 16 millimeters. The lower part of 
the rachis, while distinctly not a part of the stalk, bears no 
autozooids and in some colonies but few siphonozooids and 
might easily be mistaken for the upper portion of the stalk, 
in which case the stalk would appear to be of about the same 
length as the rachis. 
The axis extends from the midregion of the stalk to a point 
about one-third the length of the rachis from the upper end 
of the colony. It tapers from a blunt end in the rachis region 
to a pointed but r.ot recurved end in the stalk. It is four-sided 
and shows two deep longitudinal grooves in the rachis region 
which join over the blunt upper end. Those portions of the 
colony above and below the ends of the axis are often bent 
at an obtuse angle. 
The large polyps are scattered at fairly regular intervals of 
from 1 to 3 millimeters, but are not in distinct rows. In 
expansion they are from 6 to 8 millimeters in length and from 
2 to 3 millimeters in diameter at the base. They are trans- 
parent with the exception of a triangular brown area on the 
upper surface of the base of each polyp which gives the 
colony, particularly in contraction, a very characteristic spotted 
appearance. This spot fades in alcohol, leaving a transparent 
area. The extensile portion of the polyp contains no spicules 
and is completely retractile within low but quite distinct, 
outwardly and upwardly directed, spiculated basal portions 
which may or may not appear 8-rayed, depending upon the 
amount of contraction of the colony. 
The siphonozooids, which are very numerous, filling all the 
spaces between the autozooids, appear near the base of the rachis 
to lie in crowded but distinct longitudinal rows. 
