INDIAN AND PERSIAN PORITES. 235 
The last specimen is also from Muscat, and like the bulk of the specimens from the collection 
of Dr. Jayakar, of which it is one of the most remarkable. Its general growth-form is like h 
and 7, but the branches are a little thinner and longer. But in its most striking character it 
shows a specialisation the exact opposite of that shown by / and J, for the walls of the calicles 
on the knobs are of great height, very sharp, and the calicles are gaping and deep, the septa 
sloping down irregularly into the fossa without any attempt to form pali. The figure is from 
the top of a column and shows several double calicles. 
The interstices, which were naturally large, were often cavernous, owing to the destruction 
of stems by boring sponges. Many of the stems are hollowed out. 
i. (Pl. XXXII. fig. 66.) In four pieces. And a box of | 
smaller fragments. Zool. Dept. 1900. 7. 9. 3. 
245, Porites Persia (32. (P. Persica secunda.) (Pl. XXXV. fig. 20.) 
[Persian Gulf, coll. A. S. G. Jayakar; British Museum.] 
Description.—The corallum seems to have rested upon several objects (? pebbles) as a 
thick, irregular incrustation, from the sides and surface of which a cluster of stout separate 
fan-shaped knobs with constricted necks rise and bend into the perpendicular. Their tops are 
flattened, of irregular width up to 3 cm., and tend to rise into rounded eminences. The living 
layer extends about 9 cm., with a constant tendency to form a new creeping edge. 
The calicles are small, about 1 mm. in diameter. Round the top edges of the ridges the 
walls are sharp and fairly pronounced; in details of structure they closely resemble those of 
P. Persian Gulf 1. The walls flatten down, and are a fine flaky reticulum just below the 
edges of the ridges, while the calicles on their tops open in a lamellate stroma. 
This coral is so like specimen a of the preceding type in essentials that it must be regarded 
as a small calicled variety. It is a pertinent question to ask, when so many variations are 
grouped together under the last heading, Why should not this one be included among them ? 
It is quite possible that it ought to have been so included. But all the different forms grouped 
under the last heading graded off into one another, and this one seems to stand alone. 
a. Zool. Dept. 92. 1. 13. 13. 
Fossils.—There are in addition three nodules from Guverchin Kala on Lake Urmi, which 
show traces of the texture of a Poritid skeleton, and which when writing Vol. IV. I put on 
one side as true Porites. Re-examination, however, now convinces me that at least one of 
them, the only one which shows any trace of the original surface, is a Goniopora, with the 
number of septa diminishing by forking near the wall. 
Dr. Abich has also described nodular remains of Porites from the islands of the same lake, 
one set of which he thought was of the same species as Reuss’ Porites leiophylla from the 
Vienna Basin. This latter coral is also a Goniopora, and we may assume that the said 
nodules belonged to that genus. (See Vol. IV. pp. 96, 123.) 
One other group, however, may have been true Porites, and therefore must provisionally 
be recorded here under a separate heading. 
2H 2 
