90 CORALS 



phyllia raitica. Marsigli and other writers of the early part 

 of the seventeenth century extended the apphcation of the 

 word to other white stony corals, and thus it came to be 

 given by Brown, in 1756, to a coral which can be definitely 

 recognised as a specimen of a coral having the characters 

 of the modern genus Madrepora. Brown's specimen came 

 from Jamaica, and he called it " Madrepora ramosa major 

 muricata et stellata aperturis cavernarum minoribus 

 depressa." Most unfortunately Linnaeus, in his Svstema 

 Naturae (loth ed.), published in 1758, changed the name 

 to Millepora muricata, but corrected the mistake in the 

 twelfth edition of the same work and called it Madrepora 

 uiuricata. 



The generic name Madrepora was accepted and used in 

 the important treatises on corals by Lamarck, Milne- 

 Edwards and Haime, and in more modern times by Brook 

 and Bernard, the authors of the magnificent British Museum 

 Monographs on Madreporarian corals, and by many other 

 naturalists. It has been declared, however, that in conse- 

 quence of the blunder made by Linnaeus in 1758, the name 

 Madrepora should be abandoned and the genus given the 

 name Acropora, originally proposed by Oken in 1815. It 

 would be, in my opinion, a most grievous mistake if this 

 suggestion were universally adopted. The meaning of the 

 word Madrepora has become so definitely fixed by all the 

 great men of science who have studied and described the 

 anatomy of the hard and soft parts, and the species and 

 varieties of form found in the genus, that a change of name 

 will only lead to confusion in our literature. No more 

 mischievous and senseless example could be chosen to 

 demonstrate the absurdity of strict adherence to the so- 

 called Law of Priority than the proposed change of the name 

 Madrepora to Acropora. 



Madrepora is probably the most widely distributed and 

 most abundant of all the reef-building corals of the world. 

 On many of the reefs of the Indo-Pacilic regions specimens of 

 the genus seem to form an almost continuous carpet of coral, 

 extending for miles along the coast-line, and in many places 

 the water at low tide just beyond the edge of the reefs is 



