[CEYLON PEARL OYSTER FISHERIES 1905 SUPPLEMENTARY REPORTS, No. XXIX.] 



REPORT 



ON THE 



SOLITARY CORALS 



COLLECTED BY 



Professor HERDMAN, at CEYLON, in 1902. 



BY 



GILBERT C. BOURNE, M.A., D.Sc, F.L.S., 



FELLOW AND TUTOR OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. 



[With FOUR PLATES and FIVE FIGURES in the Text.] 



The following paper contains an account of a small but remarkably interesting 

 collection of Solitary Corals from Ceylon, which Professor Herdman has kindly 

 entrusted to me for identification and description. The collection includes five 

 species of Turbinolidse, of which two are apparently new to science, three species of 

 Flabellidae, six species of Fungiidse and seven species of Eupsammiidse. There are, in 

 addition, some specimens of Cyathohelia, sp. incert., and other colonial corals, but as it 

 is my intention to confine myself to a description of the solitary corals and to species 

 closely related to them, these compound forms will not be included in the present 

 memoir. 



As every student of corals knows, the classification and identification of the 

 Turbinolidas and Eupsammiidse is attended with no inconsiderable difficulties. The 

 greater number of the genera and species described by Milne-Edwards and Haime 

 (35 and 36) were fossil and the type specimens have been inaccessible to me. The 

 researches of the last forty years have added a considerable number of recent, as well 

 as fossil species, some of which are undoubtedly identical with forms described by 

 older authors ; others are undoubtedly new, but many must be regarded as doubtful, 

 for there is ample evidence that varieties have frequently been classed as sjjecies, and 

 the identity of recently discovered living genera and species with previously described 



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