AUSTRALIAN PORITES, 109 
Group II—AUSTRALIA. 
GREAT BARRIER REEF. 
I have experienced considerable difficulty in affixing the geographical title to many of the 
Australian specimens. The labels frequently record only “The Great Barrier Reef,” without 
any exact locality. 
The Great Barrier Reef as a district is clear enough, except at its northern extremity 
where it overlaps other districts, such as the “Torres Strait,” “Gulf of Carpentaria,” and 
“NE. Australia.” If only exact localities had been given, all the confusion would have been 
‘avoided. I have endeavoured to bring some uniformity by merging all forms labelled Torres 
Straits with those from the Great Barrier Reef. But those labelled N.E. Australia are in a 
separate group, except when their characters show them to belong to some known Torres 
Straits form, and then I have provisionally grouped them with that particular form. 
94, Porites Great Barrier Reef (491. (P. Queenslandie prima.) 
(GEL BODY, sales, JLB ell, 2:20, watey, al.) 
[Capricorn Island, coll. W. Saville-Kent ; British Museum. ] 
Description.—The corallum is explanate with smooth wavy surface, nearly 1 cm, thick 
where supported in the centre, but the edges, which project freely and horizontally, except that 
they show a tendency to bend up, have sharp edges (less than 1 mm.) and are supported by 
thick epitheca. 
The calicles tend to be large (1°2 mm.) on the tops of the slight waves, round and 
shallow. The walls are mostly thick and round-topped, and composed of a very close, finely 
frosted reticulum ; study shows traces of this reticulum being due to synapticular rings, but 
this is greatly obscured—it is chiefly seen in the fact that the septa can sometimes be traced 
through the wall, especially near the edges of the stock, where the septa all seem to be 
streaming outwards towards the margin. The septa, emerging from this reticulum and 
having their edges much broken up into granules, and their sides very frosted or rather 
echinulate, appear irregular, but they are in the typical formula, with here and there rings 
of small septal granules outside the pali, which are mostly in the complete formula (B, fig. 3). 
They form a ring conspicuous to the naked eye and surrounding a rather large fossa, with 
a small very inconspicuous central tubercle at a lower level than the pali. 
In the section the trabecule are smooth and pronounced but far apart, separated by rows 
of nearly square holes, the horizontal elements being thin. 
