140 A. E. Verritt — Bermudian and West Indian Reef Corals. 



Agaricia Lam. (emended). Type A. undata Ellis and Sol.* 



Agaricia (pars) Lamarck, Syst. Anim. sans Vert., p. 375, 1801 (1st species is 



" M . cucullata Ellis and Sol.," 3d species is M. undata; 2d species is now 



Merulina ampliata). 

 UndariaOken, Lehr. Naturg., p. 68, 1815 (includes 1st, agaricites; 2d, undata). 

 Agaricia (pars) Lam., Hist. Anim. s. Vert., 1815. 

 Agaricia (subgenus Mycedia) Dana, Zooph., pp. 333, 335, 1846 (non Mycedium 



Oken, 1815). 

 Agaricia and Mycedium (pars) Edw. and Haime, Corall., iii, pp. 72, 80, 1860. 



Duoh. and Mich., Cor. Antill., pp. 80, 81, 1860. 

 Agaricia Quelch, Voy. Chall., Zool., xvi, p. 116. Gregory, op. cit., p. 279, 



1895. Vaughan, op. cit., p. 63, 1901. 



This genus cannot be divided into two, on account of the charac- 

 ter of the unifacial or bifacial corals, as many writers have tried to 

 do, nor on the character of an encrusting mode of growth, as dis- 

 tinguished from the pedicelled, cup-shaped or turbinate, and folia- 

 ceous corals, formed by several of the species, and perhaps by all 

 under certain conditions, and when young. Better generic and 

 specific characters are to be found in the finely striated under side of 

 the coral, when it is free, and in the distinctly stellate calicles, 

 usually arranged in concentric lines or grooves, often separated by 

 ridges or collines, around the primary calicle, but this arrangement 

 may become irregular, obscured, or wholly lacking, in parts of very 

 old or crowded specimens of some species, like A. agaricites. 



The septa are but little prominent, usually in two to four cycles, 

 and are usually finely and rather evenly serrulate. The calicles are 

 usually rather small or of moderate size, much larger and far more 

 distinctly stellate than in Pachyseris, but not so large and prominent 

 as in Mycedium (true sense). The septa and costse are not coarse 

 and not spinose, nor lacerately toothed, as in the latter. 



The calicles often resemble those of some species of Pavona\ very 

 closely and so does the frondose structure of the coral. 



The mistake of confounding true Mycedium with this genus has 

 already been discussed above (pp. 133-135). 



* I take A. undata as type, because there is still much doubt as to the real 

 affinities of cucullata. The latter has been identified with .1/. elephantotus by 

 many, and hence put under Mycedhuu. A. undata is evidently closely allied to 

 A. fragilis. The original type is still in the Hunterian Mus. (t. Young, Ann. 

 Mag. N. H., xix, p. 116, 1877). 



f Pavona Lam., 1801, p. 372, but spelled Pavonia Lam., 1816 ; Dana, 1840, etc. 

 The two examples given, in 1801, were 1st, P. cristata, with reference to Ellis 

 and Sol., pi. 63; 2d, P. lactuca (Pallas). Edw. and Haime, Corall., iii, p. 81, 

 1860, and Gregory, op. cit., p. 279, 1895, quote P. cristata Lam., 1801, as a 

 synonym of Agaricia agaricites. If this were so, then Pavona and Agaricia 



