POLYNESIAN PORITES. 95 
a tendency for free explanate edges, which sometimes curl upwards to reappear. These free edges 
are 1 mm. thick. The columns are bent and ragged, but thick and fusing irregularly together. 
The living layer extends from 6-15 cm. deep. The whole rising surface is covered with soft 
looking ecenenchymatous papille and ridges, which are thin, 1-1-5 mm. across and 1 mm. high, 
slightly swollen and round-topped, and though gyrating, tend mostly to run upwards in the 
direction of growth. These ccenenchymatous uprisings are best developed near the tips of the 
flaming-columns. 
The-calicles are small, 0°75 mm. across; they run in streams between the papillate ridges, 
but they are conspicuous owing to their neat compact rings of pali. These surround a minute 
pin-hole fossa. The walls are level with the surface, and except where swollen into papille 
they are smooth and flat. The distance between the calicles varies greatly, the intervening 
spaces being a mosaic of frosted granules. Round each calicle there is a ring of thick, short 
septal granules continuous with those on the tops of the walls. The rings of pali are separated 
from the septal granules by shallow ill-defined circular troughs. They consist of the five principals 
and the dorsal directive; the triplets are often irregular, and all but the dorsal directive are 
thick and frosted, the four principals being often bluntly V-shaped. The fossa is either a deep 
open pin-hole, or else is closed by a columellar tubercle which, like the pali and surface granules, 
has no sharp outline, and does not rise to the level of the ring of pali. 
The rich covering of surface granules makes the bleached coral look soft and of a creamy 
white colour. 
The irregular flame-like growths due to the formation of ccenenchymatous ridges are very 
interesting features in this genus. The specimens came from Ponapé, where also one of the 
most beautiful developments of papillate Montipores (“ M. prolifera”) is found. It is worth 
noting that even in this case, which is one of the most pronounced of the ccenenchymatous 
Porites, the epitheca follows the growing edges right to their extreme limits. This is seldom 
the case in Montipora (see Introduction, p. 22). The specimens were labelled originally 
Synarea monticulosa, but see Introduction on the generic name Synarea and p. 54 for the 
description of Dana’s type. 
The chief specimen, a, is that figured in Pl. XII. fig. 1. With it I have associated a smaller 
fragment, } (fig. 2), which has a large horizontal free edge curling out from the lower edge of the 
living layer. This latter was encrusting a thick, smooth columnar growth, which, from study 
of the sections, seems to have been a dead portion of the same coral. If so, its surface papille 
must have been either submerged by growth in thickness or else corroded off after death. 
a. Zool. Dept. 81. 11. 21. 7. 
0, (Locality not certain.) Zool. Dept. 1904. 10, 17. 39. 
There are two other specimens, but they also, like 0, have no recorded locality which can 
be trusted: but, in spite of differences, they seem to be only slight variations on the above, 
and as they were both obtained from the collection of Mr. John Morgan, who purchased part 
of the corals of the Museum Godeffroy, they are here all grouped together. 
The corallum has the same methods of growth as a, but the surface is a smooth, close 
reticulum without granules, and the ecenenchymatous upheavals are not round and swollen, but 
conical and sharp, forming pointed and crested tips to the flames. There are consequently no 
septal granules, and no conspicuous pali, and the septal skeleton is quite visible, being flush 
