10 MADREPORARIA, 



The Genus GONIOPORA. 



( = Astrcea Lamarck partim ; Goniopora Quoy and Gaimard ; Goniopora + 

 Rhodarcea + Litharcea Milne-Edwards and Haime ; Goniopora + Rhodaroea 

 + Tichopora Quelcli). 



I. HISTORICAL. 



(«) Goniopora. 



The genus Goniopora is usually accredited to Quoy and Gaimard who described * under this 

 name, in 1834, a reef coral found at Port Dorey, New Guinea. They introduced the genus, how- 

 ever, as " Goniopora Blainville." The latter author evidently suggested the name, for he tells us 

 that Messrs. Quoy and Gaimard, misled by the resemblance of the coral to an Astrseid, proposed 

 to call it Astrcea pedunculata. But when they recognised that the tentacles were long and 

 in a single ring, and that the calicles were not at all lamellate or star-like, but on the contrary 

 eminently porous and echinulate, they established a new genus allied to, but distinguished in 

 the form of the animal from Alveopora. 



The name Gotiiopora, further, was actually first published by de Blainville in 1830 (Diet. 

 Sci. Nat., Is. p. 359). He referred to it as due to Messrs. Quoy and Gaimard, with whose names 

 the genus has ever since been associated. That these authors should have been disposed to 

 class the new coral with the Astrseids will be the more readily understood when we remember 

 that at least one of Lamarck's Astreeids, viz. A. calicularis, was a Goniopora (liliodarma 

 M.-E. & H.). 



The original definition of Quoy and Gaimard described the animals as " actiniform," long, 

 cylindrical, with a crown of more than a dozen simple, rather long tentacles ; further, the 

 calicles were polygonal, irregular, with echinulate margins, the stocks being glomerate, rounded, 

 encrusting, and very porous. 



This definition was slightly amplified by de Blainville : " The calicles are irregular or 

 unequal, their walls somewhat strongly grooved on the inner side, and they are united 

 side by side or above one another, forming an extremely porous non-fasciculated corallum," 

 i.e. the individual calicles are not recognisable in the fractures. 



De Blainville added no new " species " to the single type specimen called G. pedunculata f 

 Q.&G. 



In 1834, the new genus was hesitatingly suppressed by Ehrenberg (' Corallenthiere des 



* Voyage de 1' Astrolabe, Zoophytes, iv. p. 218. 



■(• This name would apply equally well to at least 30 per cent, of the known members of the 

 genus (see Plates XI. and XII.). 



