WEST INDIAN ISLANDS PORITES. ^^ 



This coral ought to be easy to identify, when the island is again visited for a study of its 

 corals. 



Zool. Dept. 99. 6. 26. 7. 



37. Porites Anguilla 2. (-P- AnguilUc sccunda.) (PI. III. fig- 3.) 

 [Anguilla, coll. Gregory ; British Museum.] 



Description.— The corallum forms small, convex cushions, apparently built up of thin, 

 explanate layers, with very thin edges, whicli may be liindered from reaching the substratum 

 all round by attached foreign organisms. An oval specimen, 3-5 cm. long by 25 cm. broad, 

 attains a thickness of 1 • 5 cm. The surface is roughed by irregularities in the thicknesses and 

 heights of the walls. 



The calicles are circular, 1 mm. in diameter, sharply sunk, but not very deep, and at 

 unequal distances apart. The walls are thick, of coarse, thick, skeletal reticulum, so as to be 

 nearly solid. The septa are short, thick, regular, but showing slight differences between 

 primary and secondary cycles. They show a tendency to be knobbed with occasional fusions 

 into pahs. The columellar tangle is usually a large solid plate, with knobbed surface, without 

 indications of regular pali, but generally of a massive central tubercle. 



The skeletal texture of the very young colony of this coral, seems to be a loose, open, 

 irregular, streaming network, which only becomes trabecular as it thickens; even then the 

 trabeculse are not conspicuous or regular. 



Compare with this coral a somewhat similar kind, Porites Barbuda 3, and the observations 

 there made. 



Zool. Dept. 1906. 1. 1. 22. 



38. Porites Santa Cruz 1. (P. Sanctm Crucis j^rima.) 



[Santa Cruz Island, coll. Duchassaing ; Turin Museimi (?) *] 



Syn. Neopc^ites Michelini Duchassaing and Michelotti, Mem. sur les Cor. des Antilles, Suppl. (1864) 

 p. 98, pi. X. figs. 9, 10. 



Description.— ThQ corallum is convex and encrusting. 



The calicles are very small, about 1 mm., superficial, with sunken centre. The septa are 

 long, thin, very echinulate, and without prominent fusions. There are from 1 to 3 crisp paU. 



* Dr Wayland Vaughan was unable to find the type of this coral in the Turin Museum 

 (see 'Stony Corals of the Porto Rican Waters,' U.S. Fish Com. Bull. (1901) ii. p. 317), and he 

 placed it in the synonymy of P. astrwoides. 



