130 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
often lacerately divided. The upper surface covered by unequal, narrow, subparallel 
septo-costal plates, which are very strongly and raggedly divided towards the margin, 
and scarcely divided at the basal parts except in the immediate vicinity of the calicles. 
The calicles are from about 5 to 6 mm. in diameter, generally very closely crowded 
against each other, but sometimes rather scattered ; the septa are of two distinct cycles, 
very unequal, remarkably exsert and deeply divided into narrow, unequal, lacerate lobes 
and spines, which give a very ragged appearance to the corallum. 
The species is close to Oxypora lacera, Verrill, but can be easily distinguished, 
among other characters, by the arrangement and structure of the calicles. 
A single large specimen was obtained. 
Locality.—Amboina. 
Family Func. 
Genus 1. Fungia, Lamarck. 
Fungia (pars), Lamarck, Syst. Anim. sans Vert., p. 369, 1801. 
Milne-Edwards and Haime, Cor., iii. p. 5. 
Duncan, Rev. Madrep., p. 141. 
” 
” 
As already pointed out by Professor Duncan, Lobactis, Plewractis, and Ctenactis, are 
synonyms of Fungia. 
Very important observations, confirmatory of those by Stutchbury and by Semper, 
have been made by Professor Moseley on the development of the young Fungia,' and it 
seems extremely desirable to insert here his account of them. 
“A Mushroom Coral (Fungia) is very common all over the reefs at Tahiti. After 
much search, I found one of the nurse-stocks from which the disc-shaped free corals are 
thrown off as buds, as was originally shown by Stutchbury, and confirmed by Semper, 
who considers the case to be an instance of alternation of generations. 
“Though the free Corals were so extremely numerous, I could only find the one nurse 
mass. It, as in Stutchbury’s specimen, consisted of a portion of a very large dead 
Fungia, to which were attached all over numerous nurse-stocks in various stages of 
growth. Some of those in the specimens have only just developed from the attached 
larva, and have as yet thrown off no buds. A small cup-like Coral is formed, and as it 
crows the mouth of the cup widens and assumes somewhat the form of the adult disc- 
shaped free Coral, but is still distinctly cup-shaped. A line of separation forms in the 
stem of this bud, and the bud falls off; a fresh bud then starts from the centre of the 
scar left by it on the stock, and the process is repeated. The fresh bud im its growth 
does not spread its attachments over the whole surface of the old scar, the margins of 
which persist as a dead zone around the base. 
1 Notes by a Naturalist on the Challenger, p. 524. 
