170 MADREPORARIA. 
raised into mounds and excrescences. The thickness reaches at least 3 mm., the edge being 
very sharp with the epitheca projecting. 
The calicles are over 1 mm., depressed, shallow, cup or funnel-shaped. The wall rises to a 
ridge nowhere sharp and yet not rounded, and consisting of the expanding, finely echinulate tips 
of the bent and irregular filaments and flakes which build up the wall. These seem to end 
freely and give the surface a woolly appearance. The septa are very irregular and consist of 
continuations of the wall flakes from different levels, of various sizes and breadths, and with 
finely echinulate or toothed edges. Their fusions can be made out by looking down from above. 
The pali are inconspicuous, and their tips fray out into fine echinule, usually five or six in a 
large ring, but the exact formula is difficult to discover. The fossa seems to be early closed by 
flakes from which a small inconspicuous columellar tubercle rises. The irregular interseptal 
loculi of adjacent calicles seem to communicate freely between the filaments and flakes which 
stand up all over the surface. 
The vertical section shows a very loose open reticulum in which both vertical and 
horizontal elements are about equally developed, neither of them being conspicuous. The meshes 
are very large. The colour is a rich dark brown. 
This coral has a very beautiful surface skeleton consisting of raised loose ends, terminating 
in fine echinulz or spikes. This looseness is found expressed in the section by the great size of 
the meshes. In an earlier draft of this work I was inclined to associate the single specimen with 
the larger corals from Tizard Bank, P. China Sea 13. But the texture is entirely different. 
a. Zool. Dept. 92. 10. 17. 116. 
169. Porites China Sea (196. (P. Sinensis sexta.) (Pl. XXVI. fig. 5.) 
[Macclesfield Bank, 17 fathoms, coll. Bassett-Smith ; British Museum. | 
Description.—The corallum is explanate and closely encrusting, without any trace of free 
edges, but following the irregularities of the substratum. 
The calicles are minute, generally under 1 mm., crowded, and distinctly pitted. The 
walls are stout and reticular on the higher parts of the stock, but thin and simple on the lower; 
in the former case, the reticulum is close and of coarse, stout threads, ending in knobs which 
make the whole surface granular. When thin, the walls are nearly straight, continuous rows 
of finely echinulate, almost bushy granules. The septa are not sharply defined, appearing as 
frosted irregular points on the inner faces of the walls at different levels; their meetings are 
rather deep down. The pali rise as frosted knobs, but they are invisible to the naked eye and 
quite inconspicuous; the four lateral principals are regularly developed, and the other four 
quite irregularly. The fossa is small and obscure, and with traces of a columellar tubercle. 
This specimen is a small complete stock, closely encrusting a mass of dead coral 
