144 MADREPORARIA. 
straggling rows of small granules or flakes standing upon a solid-looking flat surface formed 
apparently by the flaky bases of the septa. Round the edges of the shelf thus formed occurs 
the ring of rather large septal granules, and within this ring the compact ring of five pali, viz. 
the four principals and the palus formed by the fusion of the ventral triplet (see Diagram F, fig. 3, 
p. 19). The central tubercle either nearly fills the small ring of pali as a flattened oval, or 
else is a minute granule, or may be altogether absent. The section shows the trabecule hardly 
better developed than the concentric elements, both together making a rather loose, open, 
somewhat irregularly retangular network, with large open and rounded meshes. The colour of 
the unbleached stock is reddish-brown. 
The single specimen shows an old cluster, upon which three clusters have developed 
nearly separate from one another. There is also, fortunately, a quite young colony, which 
shows the method: of starting. The colour is like that of the last described form, but both 
method of growth and calicle formation are quite different. 
a Zool. Dept. 92. 12. 1. 510. 
NORTH-EAST AUSTRALIA. 
136. Porites North-East Australia* (1, (P. Australie Aguilonaris prima.) 
(Pl. XXII. fig. 1.) 
[North-East Australia, coll. H.M.S. ‘Alert’; British Museum.] 
Deseription.—The corallum is a sub-globular mass, with thin, closely adherent edges, which 
creep under the stock. The stalk seems to be composed of the rotten remains of much smaller, 
earlier globular growths. 
The calicles are very small, and apparently very irregular, often stellate, and from 0°75 
to 1 mm., mostly inconspicuous, but with scattered individuals very conspicuous on account of 
having deep, open fosse, The walls are built of a stout, close reticulum, with rounded pores, 
here larger, making the network more open, and there very small, making it appear 
nearly solid. They are rather flat-topped, and descend deeply into the calicles. The septa 
are short, rather thin and frosted, and slope as jagged plates from the top edge of the wall. 
They very seldom meet, and the only traces of pali where the septa do not meet are the 
innermost highest points of the jagged septal edges. From these pali the septa descend 
vertically round the fossa, which varies in size, is always deep, at times with a floor of close 
reticulum, at others without any such floor visible. Owing to the fact that the septa are thin, 
and do not meet, the interseptal loculi are conspicuous, and, seen from above, make the often 
inconspicuous c¢alicles star-like. 
There is only one specimen. The colour of the unbleached coral is a greyish-brown. 
a. Zool. Dept. 82. 2. 23. 171. 
* On this region see remarks on p. 109. 
