114 MADREPORARIA. 
The section shows an interesting outward streaming near the epitheca, and from this the 
trabecule bend upwards. The latter are very loosely arranged, being far apart and rather 
wavy than nodulated, joined by thin, straggling cross-pieces. 
The colour is a rich light brown, with the tips of the mammillate processes suffused with 
a rose pink, 
This growth-form, consisting of clusters of mammille rising from an explanate corallum, 
has already been described (see P. Fiji Islands 24), and it is interesting to note the somewhat 
similar woolly appearance and looseness of the trabecule in the two cases. But their calicles 
appear very different. 
There are two specimens—a shows a cluster of two stocks with drooping edges. This is 
from Palm Island. 
a. Zool. Dept. 92. 12. 1. 363. 
Specimen b has the edges curled up and crumpled, as if the stock had not had room enough 
to expand. This has forced it to be saucer-shaped, a difference in shape which will more than 
account for any differences in the characters of the calicles. It is of a richer brown colour, and 
is labelled only “Great Barrier Reef,” but it was most probably also from Palm Island. 
d. Zool. Dept. 92. 12. 1. 538. 
100. Porites Great Barrier Reef (47, (P. Queenslandie septima.) (G26 ROO, sila 7fF 
Pl. XXI. fig. 3.) 
[Palm Island, coll. W. Saville-Kent; British Museum.] 
Description.—The exact growth-form of this coral is difficult to understand, because there 
is no means of deciding for certain as to what was its natural position in life. 
It is massive, and its wavy but otherwise smooth surface seems as if it might have been 
swept over to one side by a current so as to form great smooth rounded lobes, the most 
advanced of which project freely in a horizontal position. The edges are thick, but hardly 
project. The inner parts of the stock are honeycombed by a boring sponge. 
The calicles are shallow, but conspicuous, 1-1:25 mm., with many minute young in the 
interstices. The walls, composed of large, eoarse, shapeless granules, run as stout ridges like a 
network over the corallum, and are in one or more rows. These are the tops of thick trabeculae, 
and, on a slanting view of the surface, stand up freely without any superficial concentric 
elements joining them. The septa are deep down as thick bars, or triangular plates, joining 
the wall trabecul to the pali. These latter form a neat conspicuous ring of five knobs; the 
fossa is either filled with skeletal matter, or is deep and open like a puncture. Between the 
septa the interseptal loculi show as an irregular ring of dark slits, narrow or triangular, with 
their mural ends sharply pointed, 
The colour of the unbleached stock is very dark sepia. The section is built up of thick 
trabecule. 
