MALAYAN PORITES. 161 
MOLUCCAS. 
157. Porites Moluccas ql. (P. Moluccensis prima.) 
Syn. Madrepora punctata Esper, Suppl. (1797) p. 86, pl. Ixx,, figs. 1, 2. 
Description.—The corallum is encrusting, 6-8 mm. thick in the middle, about 1 mm. 
at the edge. There is a well-developed epitheca. 
The calicles are slightly pitted. The walls are thick and built of a flaky reticulum, the 
flakes being freely perforated with rounded pores; the septa from ten to twelve (sometimes 
twenty, probably in double calicles), The interseptal loculi are long, narrow, oval, and 
symmetrical. The fossa is either a single deep pit or else filled up with a columellar tangle 
from which points may rise. 
The texture is strikingly flaky. There are no surface granules, and the appearance might 
suggest that the real surface had been rubbed off. 
This is Esper’s description of a coral found encrusting a shell (“ Anomia Sella”’), from the 
Moluccas. It was said to differ from all other corals in its “ blitterichte gewebe.” This, how- 
ever, is a known character in Poritide. Whether the form is a Porites or Goniopora, 1s uncer- 
tain, but the fact that the septa are mostly ten to twelve, seems to decide the matter in favour 
of Porites. The twenty septa occasionally found might be attributable to double calicles. On 
the other hand, Esper’s fig. 2 shows calicles with more than twelve septa, and yet of the same 
size as those with only twelve. 
The synonymy, as is the case with most of these old “ species,” is somewhat confused. 
Linneus described a coral from the “ European ocean” as Madrepora punctata, in terms 
which admit of being interpreted as referring to a Porites, in which the pali are suppressed and 
the calicles visible simply as rings of ten to twelve interseptal loculi. But it is pure guesswork 
to say that Linneus’ and Esper’s specimens were specifically identical. 
The confusion does not end here, for in 1834 Ehrenberg described a small specimen which 
he found in the Berlin Museum as “ Porites pwnctata Linn. and Esper”; the latter of these 
it could not possibly have been, because Dr. Klunzinger tells us that the columella is not 
very developed, and further because he found it to be specifically identical with a group of 
young colonies encrusting a Pinna from the Red Sea, and called by Ehrenberg MZ. Porites 
arenacea; and these again, according to Dr. Klunzinger, are specifically identical with 
specimens which he himself collected in the Red Sea, one of which he photographed 
(Pl. V. fig. 27). This photograph shows a form very different indeed from that figured by 
Esper. 
In 1851, in their ‘ Polyp. foss. ter. Pal.’ p. 143, Milne-Edwards and Haime expressed their 
conviction that Ehrenberg’s Porites punctata was not the Madrepora punctata of Linneus, and 
made a new genus for it, Stylarea, placed it as one of their Poritine and called it Stylarca 
miilleri. In the same year, however, as if giving up the struggle, they replaced it among the 
Porites as “ Porites punctata Linn.-Esper.-Ehrenberg ” (Monographie des Poritides, p. 30). 
For further details see Porites Red Sea 9. 
Y 
