OCR Text |
Show 60 MR. J. Y. JOHNSON ON THE [Jan. 17, 2. PLEUROCORALLIUM MADERENSE, sp. nov. (Plates V. & VII. figs. 1 & 4.) Branching luxuriantly in one plane to the seventh or eighth degree of subdivision. Ramification close, dense. Branches irregularly flexuose, not anastomosing. The ultimate branches, when stripped of their cortex and cells, are seen to taper to a fine point. The white axis is hard, compact, elliptical in transverse section, and its surface is smooth. The thin cortex is coloured a pale ochraceous yellow when the coral is fresh from the sea. Its surface is minutely papillate or granular. The polype-cells or calycles are very numerous and are all seated on the anterior aspect of the branches, mostly at their sides or at the tips of the ultimate branchlets. They are prominent, cylindrical, about 2 millim. long and 1 millim. in diameter. Their sides are marked with eight vertical ribs, and the mouths are surrounded by eight upright bundles of spicula forming an oval termination of the cell. The polypes have an orange colour. Five forms of spicula are found in this species, viz.:-(1) numerous double carafes with two necks ; (2) a few of the short two-whorled cylindrical rods or staves ; (3) irregular rayed balls ; (4) elongate, cylindrical, fusiform or clavate, tuberculated ; (5) cruciform. All these agree more or less closely with the correspondingly numbered spicula of the preceding species. (See Plate VII. figs. 1 & 4.) If the spicula alone were regarded, this species is more closely allied to the first than to the third species here described, but it is widely separated from the former by habit and coloratiou. From the following species, which agrees with it in coloration, it is distinguished by its much greater degree of ramification and the consequent greater density and delicacy of the branches ; by the smooth, not striated surface of the hard axis under the cortex; by the form of the polype-cells, which are cylindrical, not hemispherical and wart-like ; by the presence in the cortex of irregularly formed ball-like spicula and of a few cruciform spicula ; and finally by the absence of the smooth form of double carafe spicule. Only a single specimen of this very beautiful coral is known, and that was obtained so lately as the summer of this year (1898) by the Rev. Padre Ernesto Schmitz, late Director of the Episcopal Seminario, Funchal, from a fisherman who told him it had been brought up a few days previously by a fishing-line from deep water off Camara de Lobos, a village six miles to the west of Funchal. The specimen has been placed in the Museum of the Seminario, and a short description of it will now be given'. The base is wanting, the stem having been broken away from it. The height of what remains is 30 centim., or about 12 inches, 1 For copies of the photographs of the entire corals from which the illustrations on Plates V. & VI. have been taken, I a m greatly indebted to the kindness of the Eev. Padre Ernesto Schmitz, the founder of the Seminario Museum, Funchal, and for many years its indefatigable curator. |