PORITES. 3 



certainly associated with such-and-such localities. We shall further find the following story 

 interesting, because it reveals the difficulty of designating the units by their characters, thus 

 leaving the name of the locality as the simplest and most obvious factor to be used for the 

 purposes of reference. 



The story of the West Indian Pontes may be said to begin with three forms which 

 Lamarck briefly specified in his " Animaux sans Vertebres," ii. (1816) p. 263, under the 

 division, "Les Animaux Lamelliferes." These forms were Pontes clavaria, Porites furcata, and 

 Porites astrceoides. The originals are fortunately stiU preserved in the Paris Museum. With 

 regard to them, we have to note two facts of importance for the understanding of the following 

 history : (a) the exact localities from which they came are unknown * ; (b) the names clavaria 

 and furcata bore no special comparative significance. They did not imply that one was more 

 club-shaped than the other, which was more openly forked. They were mere names suggested 

 by the forms independently, and totally without reference to one another. A moment's 

 glance at the figures makes this apparent. (See PI. XIII. fig. 1 ; PL XII. fig. 1). 



It is clear, then, that not much was known about these specimens except their names, for, 

 as we shall see later on, the only published figure of one of them— prior to those given in this 

 volume— has been almost entii-ely ignored. And yet in spite of (perhaps because of) this 

 ignorance, we have the "species," which these three were supposed to represent, assuming 

 colossal proportions in the minds of naturalists, spoken of as if familiar to every one, as if 

 inhabiting the whole of the West Indies, so that every worker expected and seems to have 

 wished to see one of them in every fresh form discovered. The following story is practically 

 that of the triumph of this wish. At first, it was baffled by the facts, but it eventually gained 

 a victory which, needless to say, was not only absolutely without any value whatever to 

 science, but has practically to be ignored before we can begin again with the facts. 



I do not mean by this that all the work done has been useless : far from it. The collection 

 of facts, some valuable contribution to which has been made by every one of the writers whose 

 works we shall quote, has permanent value, but only so far as we can disentangle them, as facts 

 from the network spun over them of imaginary specific relationships, which the mind now con- 

 jures up in association with every striking specimen discovered. No one can deny, of course, 

 that every specimen necessarily connotes a group of genetically related forms. But the whole 

 problem, with all the initial mistakes as to its method of solution, has turned simply upon the 

 legitimacy of our conceptions as to the nature and extent of this said group of genetically 

 related forms. The result of this story will be, I hope, to give at last some not only 

 definable but demonstrable meaning to the group ; not till this has been done can it become a 

 workable unit. 



The first work to deal exclusively with West Indian corals is that of Lesueurf in 1820. 



» "Astrceoides " was said to come from " L'0c6an Americain," clavaria from " Les Mers d'Amerique 

 at de rinde," while furcata was from some unknown region. Throughout this volume I have assumed 

 that Lamarck's " mers d'Amerique " means the West Indies ; for with these islands Fiance appears 

 to have been in frequent communication. Many of them are .still French. 



t Mem. du Museum, vi. p, 271. 



