POLYNESIAN PORITES. 85 
62. Porites Solomon Islands qo4, (P. Salomonis quarta.) (Pl. IX. fig. 2; Pl. XI. fig. 5.) 
[Treasury Island, coll. Dr. Guppy; British Museum. ] 
Description.—The corallum forms a tangled clump of branching and forking or short cocks- 
comb-like processes, bent, fusing and radiating in all directions from a central encrusting base, 
which closely envelops the thick stems of other branching corals. The edges of its explanate 
encrusting base are often free and very sharp and thin, with a margin of epitheca projecting. 
The calicles are not very crowded, 1 mm. in diameter, quite superficial, except where sunk 
between low ccenenchymatous ramparts ; ill-defined and not very visible, as irregular star-like 
breaks in the surface. The walls are flat on all smooth explanate portions of the stock, and 
consist of large smooth flakes, but on the branches they are swollen into low rounded ramparts 
of close reticulum, the end threads of which look like granules, so that the whole coral has a 
kind of “bloom” over it. The septa are rather thick and well developed ; the usual pairs meet 
and fuse so completely as only to leave six long interseptal loculi opening into the fossa. The 
pali are only slightly more differentiated than the other granules, and form no conspicuous 
compact ring visible to the naked eye. The fossa shows the usual dimorphism, being sometimes 
deep, dark punctures from which a few interseptal loculi radiate outwards, and at others closed 
by a dense almost plate-like columellar tangle on which there may be an inconspicuous 
tubercle. The section shows a light, very open reticulum, in which the trabecular and the 
horizontal or concentric elements are equally thin. 
There is one complete stock encrusting the dead branches of a Madrepora. Two or three 
separate edges can be seen investing the supporting stem of the Madrepora, the innermost 
adhering to it, while the outermost creeps with many a free edge over the tips of the branches 
of former living layers, and in doing so shows a tendency to break up into small patches. 
It is difficult to fix exactly what was the position of the coral when it was growing, but it 
looks as if the wavy irregular cockscomb-like processes grew outwards in almost vertical 
planes and very close together. They are about 1 cm. long, with their surfaces deeply indented 
by the calicles sunk between sloping ccenenchymatous ridges. Calicles occur in the more open 
reticulum right up to the growing angular tips of the branchlets. 
This is the only ccenenchymatous Porites so far recorded from the Solomon Islands. 
a. Zool. Dept. 84. 11. 21. 29. 
63. Porites Solomon Islands (5, (P. Salomonis quinta.) (Pl. VIII. fig. 3; Pl. XIII. fig. 26.) 
[Shortland Island, coll. Dr. Guppy; British Museum. | 
Description.—The corallum forms large rounded masses with smooth, slightly wavy 
surface. The edges turn under all round, closely adherent. 
Calicles minute, 0°75 mm., quite superficial, of no regular shape. The walls are thin, 
