POLYNESIAN PORITES. 91 
NEW GUINEA. 
70. Porites New Guinea (31, (P. Nova Guineensis 1.) 
[Galewo Straits, coll. German Corvette ‘Gazelle’; Berlin Museum. } 
Syn. Synarewa convexa Studer (? Verrill) MB, Akad. Wiss., Berlin (1878) p. 537. 
Description.—The corallum forms large masses, 31 cm. high and 40 cm. in diameter. 
They are built up of more or less cylindrical branches of very varying thickness, and mostly 
end in cylindrical branchlets which are seldom flattened at the tips. The ccenenchyma is 
very open, loose, and reticular. The surface is covered with fine echinule. 
The calicles have ill-defined outlines. 
This is Dr. Studer’s description. We gather from it that the coral was a ccenenchymatous 
Porites, resembling P. Society Islands 3 in the structure of the calicles. The growth-forms of 
the two, however, seem to be very different, judging from the specimens of the latter in this 
museum. 
71. Porites New Guinea (32, (P. Nova Guineensis secunda.) (Pl. IX. fig. 3.) 
[New Guinea, coll. Macfarlane; British Museum.] 
Description.—The corallum envelops other objects, either the tips of branched corals, and 
is then pear-shaped, or loose objects, and is then a free detached stock. The surface is smooth 
and slightly wavy. In the erect pear-shaped stock the living layer may extend downwards 
10 cm., the edge being closely adherent round the base. 
The calicles are minute, under 1 mm, in diameter, closely crowded, almost flush with the 
surface, and constructed of the finest filamentous reticulum, angular and crisp rather than 
fluent. The walls at the sides are a very delicate thread, slightly raised and in a fine zigzag, 
with, however, rounded angles. All over the coral there is a tendency to thicken this wall 
by an inner synapticular ring, the symmetry of which is never quite lost, and yet the reticular 
walls thus formed are not stiff. The septa are thin and angular, but they meet and form 
inconspicuous pali, the formula of which varies greatly, the four principals always being the 
largest. The fossa seems to be filled up with a close filamentous tangle. 
There are two specimens: one pear-shaped, the stalk being a dead coral branch; and the 
other a free nodule. The surface is so delicate and friable that it is not always easy to say 
at any point whether the characters seen are those of the calicles at the surface, or those of 
a section formed by rubbing the surface down. Where the walls are crisp raised threads, there 
is no difficulty, but where the surface, as near the top of the pear-shaped stock, is a close 
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