POLYNESIAN PORITES. 89 
is here placed with the former solely because it has only twelve septa, with no trace whatever 
of a third cycle, although the interseptal loculi are large enough to admit of rudimentary septa 
in their bases, had any been developed. On the absence of pali in Porites with deeper calicles, 
see Introduction, p. 18. 
a. Zool. Dept. 84. 12. 11. 1. 
67. Porites Solomon Islands qo)9, (P. Salomonis nona.) (PI. VIII. fig. 8; Pl. XII. fig. 1.) 
[Solomon Islands, coll. Dr. Guppy; British Museum. ] 
Description—The corallum rises into long, stout, tapering spikes, which branch seldom, 
but very irregularly and crookedly. The rounded stems at their bases where they are dying 
away may be 3 cm. thick, The spikes may be 12 cm. long, the rounded tips less than 
0°5 em. thick. 
The calicles are flush with the surface, usually round, and 1 mm. in diameter. The walls 
are uniformly thick, flat and solid looking, and consist mostly of a mosaic of granules without 
definite order (these are here and there flattened into crumpled flakes). The intra-calicular 
skeleton is separated from the walls by a sharp furrow. The ring of septal granules is frequently 
complete and symmetrical, the granules themselves being very small. Within this ring are the 
pali in the complete formula of eight (B, fig. 3, Introduction, p. 19). A columellar tubercle fills 
up the centre. 
The cross section shows trabecular and concentric elements, both thick, both equally and 
very symmetrically developed. 
There are three large specimens of this coral. As might be expected, they were labelled 
“P. levis Dana” (see P. Fizi Islands 1), There is, however, no special resemblance to Dana’s 
coral in growth-form: the tips are not compressed, and the surface granules not so large and 
massive, and the relative sizes of trabecular and concentric elements more nearly equal and 
both symmetrically arranged. In P. Fiji Islands 1 the trabecular elements are thicker than 
the concentric, a fact which may be co-ordinated with the larger size of the surface granules, 
and the arrangement is not very regular. 
Most of the stems and branches of the specimen were in life being hollowed out by a 
boring sponge, whose oscula may be found within even 0°5 cm. of their extreme points. 7 
a, b, & Zool. Dept. 84. 11. 21.4 24. 
33. 
68. Porites Solomon Islands qo)10, (P. Salomonis decima.) 
[Kaiserin Augusta Bay, Bougainville, coll. German Corvette ‘Gazelle’; Berlin Museum. | 
Syn. Porites fragosa Studer (? Dana), MB. Akad. Wiss. Berlin (1878) p. 537. 
Description.—The corallum is shaped like a head, with wavy or humpy (héckerige) surface ; 
occasionally, owing to growth in height accompanied by the dying away of the basal parts, it 
assumes strange shapes (e.g. like the fungus Morchella). 
N 
