MALAYAN PORITES. 175 
off the calicles into polygonal areas. On each side of this ridge the walls and septa slope down 
to form shallow funnel-shaped depressions. These are surrounded by large, thick, wedge- 
shaped, frosted masses, which represent both the wall and septal granules in one. The pali 
form a small, distinct, compact ring visible to the naked eye, as rising slightly in the base of 
the depression. The complete formula is frequently visible. The fossa is small, with traces 
deep down of a columellar tubercle. 
The section shows a close array of very stout, straight trabecule with much slighter 
horizontal junctions. The colour is a very pale fawn. 
There are about six patches of this coral on the surface of a great piece of coral rock, which 
appears to have been built up by this Porites. The largest is some 6 cm. long, and the smallest 
is but 1 cm. in diameter. It is impossible to say whether the coral always grows in such 
patches, or whether they represent parts of the same coral, the intervening portions having 
died away. 
This coral, though in general habit not unlike No. 5 from the Macclesfield Bank, is yet 
different in all details except growth-form and in the fact of the surface consisting of very 
frosted granules. 
a. Zool. Dept. 89. 9. 24. 75. 
At one side of the largest patch is a minute colony of Montipora under 2 mm. in 
diameter and containing about three calicles (one large and two small) in a small epithecal 
saucer. 
175. Porites China Sea (1912. (P. Sinensis duodecima.) (Pl. XXVII. fig. 2.) 
[Tizard Bank, Nam-yil reef, 3 feet, coll. Bassett-Smith ; British Museum. | 
Description.—The corallum is massive or in thick, flat cakes. The living layer bends over 
and hangs steeply down the vertical sides of fractures. 
The calicles are minute scattered stars, here crowded, there dispersed, about 0°5 mm. in 
diameter. The walls are smooth and flat between individual calicles, but rise up into smooth, 
rounded papille which run together to form miniature mountain-ranges as muchas 2 mm. high 
and broad with systems of hollows, gullies and intervening valleys. Calicles are scattered over 
these ranges—never, however, on the topmost or sloping ridges, always in depressions. The 
texture of the wall is very loose and open, being a maze of sharp, clearly-defined, very jagged 
threads or flakes with the interseptal loculi of adjoining calicles running into one another. The 
papille consist of a rather dense filamentous reticulum, but round their bases they are flaky and 
run into the flakes of the surface. Where the coral hangs over, the wall consists of broad, 
smooth, flat flakes, with very scanty perforations, and their surfaces are covered with small 
frosted granules, the tips of trabeculae. Here also the papille are built of flakes, but the 
