CATALOGUE 



OF 



MADREPORARIA. 



Volume II. 



TURBINARIA. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



This interesting genus of Stony Corals is remarkably rich in forms — ciips, large and small ; 

 globular masses ; great, shapeless mounds ; immense cabbage-like growths of erect leaves, 

 curling or flat ; low, creeping forms, sending up hollow cylinders or tangles of small crisp 

 leaflets ; and many other equally beautiful and striking growths. 



The name Turhinaria (Turbo, a whirl, a top) was originally applied to the cup-shaped 

 specimens alone. It was only little by little that the other growths of this coral, though so 

 unlike cups, and bearing other names, were found to be related forms, and came to be classed 

 under the same name. In so grouping them together, naturalists were led chiefly by the 

 apparent stolon-like method of budding of the polyps, common to them all. Time has fuUy 

 justified this arrangement, and thrown light upon this peculiar method of budding. Any large 

 collection, such as that in the British Museum, will be found to contain so many cups, and so 

 many cups which, by the frilling or drooping of their edges, are in the process of changing 

 into one or other of the above-mentioned growths — and further, so many forms, now no longer 

 like cups, but which, on closer scrutiny, show that they were at one time stalked — that one 

 is forced to the conclusion that they all began life as minute cups, and only as they grew in 

 size lost the cup shape. It is, however, not always lost, for some continue to grow as cups 

 to an enormous size. 



The genus Turhinaria, therefore, is remarkable on this very account. It stands alone 

 among the other genera of Stony Corals by its singular start in life. The first polyp of a 

 colony, developing from an attached larva, grows to a certain height before it buds. When 



B 



