90 MADREPORARIA. 
This is the essential part of Dr. Studer’s description. Nothing is gained by claiming this 
to be of the same species as Dana’s coral, P. fragosa, from the Fiji Islands (see p. 52). It is 
quite possible that many of these different forms, could they be cultivated, would turn out to be 
but variations due to the environment on some common form—variations, I mean, so unstable 
that transplantation would cause almost instant change. But that is exactly what we want to 
find out. The first step is to catalogue the forms themselves as they exist, making no assump- 
tions as to their exact relationships. 
The specimen which suggested the Morel fungus to Professor Studer had a cylindrical 
stalk 8-9 cm. thick and 18 cm. long. The head was alive; its surface was raised into a 
number of eminences, and its lower margin round the stalk had a very prominent edge. 
NEW IRELAND. 
69. Porites New Ireland qyl, (P. Nova Hibernica prima.) 
[New Ireland, coll. Quoy and Gaimard; Paris Museum.] 
Syn. Porites Gaimardi (partim) M.-E. & H., Les Coralliaires, iii. (1860) p. 179. 
Description.—The corallum is nearly hemispherical, with quite smooth surface. 
The calicles, 1 mm. in diameter, are conspicuous and cylindrical, as if sharply sunk, from 
0:5-0°75 mm. deep. The walls are uniformly 0°5 mm. across, with faint traces of a median 
thread, and thickened by the septa. The angles are reticular, and in almost every angle on 
the upper surface a minute shallow calicle is opening. 
The septa are indistinct, thick, and closely packed. Some distance down they join a 
columellar tangle, which supports a star-shaped mass carrying the columellar tubercle. The 
pali form a neat conspicuous ring close to the wall of each calicle. The formula is irregular, 
owing to the fact that the typical fusions are sometimes not completed; nine pali may appear. 
The calicles seem to be distinguished by two rings of pores: outside the pali, the interseptal 
loculi; and inside, the spaces between the rays of the star-shaped ceniral mass. 
I do not feel satisfied about this description, taken from notes made in Paris six years ago, 
before any real insight into the genus was obtained. 
The description is founded upon a specimen in that museum (No. Z 188), which is one 
of Milne-Edwards’ P. Gaimardi, with an old label “ Nouvelle Irlande,” and this is one of 
the localities mentioned by M.-E. & H. (1. c.). But this cannot, of course, be Quoy and 
Gaimard’s type of their “conglomerata,”’ which came from Vanikoro (see P. Queen Charlotte 
Island 1, p. 82), and the descriptions certainly do not agree. I find in my notes that the 
specimen is very beautiful in texture. 
There were other specimens in the Paris Museum, labelled P. Gaimardi, but without 
localities, and none of them were like either this, or Quoy and Gaimard’s description. 
