188 MADREPORARIA. 
The calicles are very shallow and inconspicuous, uniform in size, 1:25 mm. The walls 
have a median ridge, tracing a polygonal pattern over all the upper parts of the colony, but 
gradually disappearing below. Its texture is an irregular lamellate lattice-work, the top edge 
of which is here and there frosted and bent over for the formation of a fresh layer of horizontal 
flakes. This median ridge stands upon flakes, which are small and like the scales of 
Lepidoptera in the upper parts of the colony, but broad flat sheets in the lower parts, where 
the median ridge disappears. The tongue-like septa at different levels fill up the calicle round 
the fossa, greatly obscuring the interseptal loculi. The pali are fairly regular, and form a boss 
visible to the naked eye; the formula is frequently complete, eight in number (Diagram B, 
fig. 3, Introduction, p.19). The fossa is large and very frequently deep and open, visible 
like a pin-hole to the naked eye. 
The section is remarkable. The axis is occupied by a wide-meshed, very pronounced, 
lamellate reticulum, round which thin trabecule, rather far apart, run through wavy, con- 
centric, but interrupted, rings of skeletal matter, leaving large meshes. 
Traces of colour suggest a light brown tinged with olive-green. 
The original large specimen of this coral (a), described by Dr. Briiggemann, is in the 
British Museum, having been purchased from the dealer, Gustave Schneider, in Basel. There 
is a small fragment in the Hamburg Museum, which Dr. Rehberg* thought was the original. 
It is possibly a detached branchlet of the large specimen. 
In addition to a, there are fragments from the Raffles Museum. One of them, 0, from 
West Singapore, shows the same method of growth and section, but the flakes do not form 
quite the same pattern as in a, but are arranged more as a flaky reticulum. 
a. Zool. Dept. 78. 4. 1. 3. 
b. Zool. Dept. 93. 7. 22. 19. 
(c is a box of small fragments of a.) 
190. MERGUI ARCHIPELAGO. 
[Though topographically this belongs to the Indian Ocean, a glance at the map shows the 
island-group joined on to the Malay Archipelago. The faunistic evidence confirms this view. | 
The specimens of Porites collected by Dr. Anderson from this locality are all preserved in 
the Indian Museum, Calcutta. They were examined by Duncan,ft who states that “the genus 
flourishes at Mergui.” He records three forms which were apparently true Porites. 
1. One from Elphinstone Island, thought by Duncan to be a variety of that called Porites 
conglomerata by Quoy and Gaimard in the Voy. de l’Astrolabe, Zooph., p. 249, pl. 18, figs. 6-8, 
* Hamburg Abhandlungen, xii. (1893) p. 48. 
t Journ. Linn, Soc, Zool. xxi. (1889) p. 20. 
