39 
The Lobularias do not show any of the spindles and single clubs which often occur in 
Alcyonium. This difference in spiculation probably means more than any difference in the lobing 
of the colony, to which Ehrenberg attached importance, though it may be regarded as charac¬ 
teristic of Lobularias that the common basal trunk of the colony is very shallow, and bears 
numerous relatively simple and compacted lobes. 
1. Lobularia ceylonicum (Pratt). (Plate XXIII, Fig. 2). 
For description (Alcyonium ceylonicum), see: E. M. Pratt, Report Ceylon Pearl Fisheries, 
R. S. London, N° XIX, 1905, p. 257, 3 figs. 
Stat. 273. Jedan Island. 13 M. Sand and shells. 1 Ex. 
A creamy white tough colony, with a low capitulum, 11 cm. by 4.8 cm., with a total 
height of 4 cm. The surface of the capitulum bears numerous, irregularly-shaped lobes, some 
of which are cylindrical and others flattened. The texture is not fleshy, as in Miss Pratt’s single 
specimen, but firm and slightly granular. 
Our specimen otherwise corresponds closely to Miss Pratt's description of Alcyonium 
ceylonicum , e. g. 
(a) in the small size of the crowded autozooids, about 13 to a centimetre; 
( 3 ) in the spiculation. The spicules are chiefly densely tuberculate dumb-bells with a distinct 
waist. A common size is about 0.12 by 0.1 mm. 
The young forms show only a few tubercles at each end of the dumb-bell. Among the 
dumb-bells there are some forms with the waist reduced to a mere line, and an end view of 
these suggests a sphere. There are no minute finger-biscuit-like spicules, such as are common 
in other Lobularias. 
Previously recorded from Galle, Ceylon. 
2. Lobularia digitulatum (Klunzinger) 
For description see: KLUNZINGER, Korallthiere des rothen Meeres, 1877, Part I, p. 24, 1 fig. 
Stat. . Illegible. 2 Ex. 
Two low-growing colonies of a greyish-white colour, covered with numerous compressed 
lobes like short fingers, but coalescing at their bases in groups. The top of each lobe bears 
8—12 polyps. The height of the larger colony is 1.7 cm., and the top shows a length and 
breadth of 3.8 cm. and 2.4 cm. 
Besides its narrow lobes like short fingers, longer than broad, this species is marked by 
{a) minute, narrow, elliptical spicules, with or without constriction, not roughly thorny; (b) narrow, 
minute, thorny cylinders; and (c) larger rough-ended dumb-bells, with variable length of waist, 
very like those of L. splicerophorum. 
Dimensions of the spicules are as follows : — 
(a) 0.05 X 0-02 mm. 
ib) 0.06 X 0.02 mm. 
(c) A maximum size of 0.01 X 0.06 mm. 
Previously recorded from Red Sea. 
