228 MADREPORARIA. 
while the edges of the wall flakes are smooth. They are usually broken up into granules, 
which diminish in size towards the centre, and together form symmetrical radial and concentric 
arrangements. The septa fuse in the typical manner, but without the formation of pali. The 
interseptal loculi are narrow, but frequently run right up between the mural flakes. The fossa 
is shallow and ill-defined, and further obscured by a flattened central tubercle highly 
echinulate like the septa. 
The section is close and rather solid. The trabecular elements round the flaky axial 
reticulum are irregular, sometimes obscured, at others very stout, closely packed, and with 
obscure concentric elements, at others again the concentric elements are pronounced. 
The colour of the unbleached stock is a cold grey. 
This coral, exemplified by only one specimen, is almost unique in the genus on account of 
the beauty of the pattern of its large calicles. The long, wedge-shaped highly frosted or echinu- 
late septa filling up the aperture of the calicle, and broken into two systems of granules, radial 
and concentric, the tips of the septa diminishing to a vanishing point without formations 
of conspicuous pali, are especially worth noting. 
The stock appears to have been free, for it not only occurs on the same sand and 
coral bottom as the last coral, but has irregular processes growing out in all directions, 
on some of which it probably rested. The only visible fracture does not suggest that of 
a stalk of attachment strong enough to have carried the stock. 
a. Zool. Dept. 82. 10. 17. 195. 
MADAGASCAR. 
238. Porites Madagascar 41. (P. Hannonis prima.) 
[Nossibé ; Hamburg Museum.] 
Syn. Porites profundus Rehberg, Abh. Naturw. Verein Hamb. xii. (1892) p. 48, pl. iii. figs. 4, 5, 6. 
Description.—The Corallum forms erect palmate stocks, fused below, and with only a few 
free, conical, sometimes forking tips. In a stock 10 cm. high, the branches were not 
more than 1°5 cm. thick. 
The calicles are large (sometimes 2°5 mm.), very deep, never superficial, with thin, 
almost trabecular walls, with sharp, polygonal edges in the upper part of the stock. From 
these edges the fossa descends steeply, septa only appearing deep down. These are not 
always uniform, being broader round the periphery, everywhere covered with granules and 
sometimes with small eminences. The pali are very indistinct, recognisable as a ring in the 
upper better developed calicles; the columellar tubercle, on the other hand, is thin and 
clearly visible. In section the texture is loose and open, and dried organic matter appears 
green. 
