INDIAN OCEAN PORITES. 215 
shorter and a little thicker. In both, the tips of these branchlets when rounded end in a 
delicate flaky reticulum, and in } this open flaky reticulum is frequently developed also in 
the angles between two stems or branchlets. 
Both specimens show the skeletal elements hollowed out by a burrowing alga. Specimen 
a has a remote resemblance to P. Mauritius 3, but close examination shows them to be different 
in every detail. 
a. With erect free branches. Zool, Dept. 86. 11. 22. 12. 
b. Branches short and fused into a convex mass. Zool. Dept. 86. 11. 22. 4. 
221. Porites Maldives 98, (P. Maldivium tertia.) (Pl. XXXI. fig. 9; Pl. XXXIV. fig. 7.) 
[Maldives ; British Museum. ] 7 
Description—The corallum forms large, unattached lenticular tangles of stems, either 
fused together or joined by explanate outgrowths. Great numbers of thin, bent, and curving 
processes radiate very irregularly outwards in all directions, not only upwards and downwards, 
but also radially round the periphery. These flatten at the tips, and fork. The stock rests 
on the tips of those which happen to be undermost. As the coral increases in size and weight 
and ceases to roll, the under portion dies. The living layer is some 7 cm. deep. 
The calicles are polygonal, about 1°25 mm., flush with the surface. The walls are slightly 
raised as a median ridge on the tips, and for varying short distances down the sides of the 
branchlets. This ridge is a thin, straight or wrinkled, seldom zigzag, granular thread, some- 
times, especially in the lower parts of the stock, visibly rising from a layer of flakes. It is, 
here and there regularly thickened by portions of the synapticular wall. The thin septa are 
fairly regular, showing at the surface as rings of septal granules and pali, with sometimes wall- 
granules apart from the ridge as well. The surface is thus a layer of minute granules, in 
which the calicles can be easily recognised by their arrangement. The pali are frequently in 
complete formula. The central tubercle is sometimes—that is, when the fossa is deep and open 
—wanting, at others distinct, and rising from a large tangle which, lower down, almost fills 
the calicle, for the septa seem to be freely joined by scattered synapticule. 
The section shows a stout, open, very lamellate, streaming reticulum, which appears at all 
the tips of the processes, with calicles opening in its surface. Round this is a close layer of 
stout radial trabecule, very pronounced, with rows of small pores between, and only slight 
development of continuous concentric elements. The colour is a rich chocolate-brown. 
This coral is very interesting; its detached yet branching growth (cf. P. Mauritius 5), its 
very pronounced axial streaming reticulum of stout lamelle, in sharp contrast with the radial 
trabecule, and the number of granules along the lines of the septa—there are sometimes 
four, including the ridge granule—are the chief features of interest. On the last point, 
compare the Introduction, p. 15. 
Pl. XXXI. fig. 1 shows the calicles of a creeping edge, where the surface granules are less 
pronounced. 
a. Zool. Dept. 86. 11. 22. 13. 
b. With three bleached fragments. Zool. Dept. 86. 11. 22. 2. 
