POLYNESIAN PORITES. 49 
reticulum, though still coarse, is more open, and sometimes has large pores, making it a flaky 
filamentous foam. The swellings tend to overhang the calicles, which makes them look 
smaller. The pali are very pronounced. Zool. Dept. 86. 12. 9. 320. 
The forms which follow are all from “Fiji Islands” without further information. I 
naturally assume that the main group is meant. These, therefore, come before the specimens 
from the island Rotumah, which lies at the extreme north of the group. 
21. Porites Fiji Islands @46. (P. Hidjiensis sexta.) (PI. III. fig. 8; Pl. XIII. fig. 9.) 
[‘‘ Feejee Islands,” coll. F. M. Rayner; British Museum.] 
Description.—The corallum is explanate, with smooth surface, but rising into smooth, 
rounded mammille ; it attains a thickness of 1 cm., the edges being less than 1 mm. 
The calicles only pit the surface slightly, and are without sharp outlines, but apparently 
about 1 mm. in diameter. The walls are thick, flat, and solid looking, and as if composed of 
flakes, the edges and surface of which form opaque, chalky granules of no definite shape, 
sometimes even smooth and round (? due to corrosion), at others frosted. The thick, opaque 
flakes of the wall slope down on each side to form the broad jagged septa, which frequently 
fuse together laterally into broad solid triangles with ragged edges. The radial symmetry is 
greatly obscured; the complete number of interseptal loculi is rarely seen, while the coarse, 
jagged granules scattered on the wall seem to invade the calicle quite irregularly, and only 
rarely appear as a ring of pali. In the most symmetrical calicles this ring consists of five, 
and is sometimes surrounded by a ring of septal granules of the same size, but these, owing 
to the indefiniteness of the interseptal loculi and the width of the septa, often appear to 
belong to the wall. 
This specimen is only a fragment of a colony which was evidently struggling with 
unfavourable circumstances. Its true growth-form is unknown. The specimen looks as if it 
might have been the explanate base of a cluster of mammillate mounds, or even branches. 
The single specimen is nearly covered over by a millepore, and the living colony is confined 
to one edge. Away from the edge it slopes up one side of a mammillate process, while some 
of its edges are creeping over the dead previous growth (see Pl. XIII. fig. 9). Some of the 
calicles have what I can only think to be pathological characters; the surface granules are 
swollen into large, white, erect, oval grains. Assuming the majority of the calicles to be 
normal, they somewhat resemble those figured by Esper for his “ Madrepora arenosa ” (Suppl. 
deep les lxcva): 
i The ee specimen was named “P. nigrescens Dana” by Briiggemann, and so 
recorded in his MS. Catalogue. This identification is based solely upon the flaky walls, and 
ignores the very pronounced growth-form of Dana’s coral. It is, as above suggested, possible 
that the specimen is a basal stage of a branching Porites, but we have no ground for assuming 
this, and still less ground for assuming that the form would be P. nigrescens (see P. Fit 
Islands 8, p. 51). 
a. Zool. Dept. 62. 2 4. 48. 
H 
