296 GILBERT 0, BOURNE. 



in the lagoon at some distance from ray hut, and want of space 

 and appliances prevented me from constructing proper aquaria 

 in which to study them at leisure. Such as I tried to keep 

 alive in buckets and tubs full of sea water soon perished, the 

 water rapidly becoming foul in the hot climate unless a 

 constant stream is kept through it. As for placing any indi- 

 viduals of Fungia or masses of any other coral in a particular 

 spot on the beach where they might be readily accessible for 

 study, a short experience showed me the impracticability of 

 the suggestion. Placed on the lagoonward beech in smooth 

 water they were quickly covered with and destroyed by the 

 sand ; on the external shores they were at once rolled over and 

 over and destroyed by the great waves which are capable of 

 moving masses weighing 2 cwt. and more, and throwing them 

 up in a sort of low wall all round the island. 



The specimens which I brought home for examination were 

 killed with hot corrosive sublimate, and afterwards treated 

 with picric acid and preserved in 70 per cent, spirit. In 

 this way I was able to preserve several specimens with the 

 short stumpy tentacles fully expanded, as is shown in fig. 1. 



Although the general features of the corallum of Fungia 

 have been well known for a long time, and have more recently 

 been carefully described by Professor Martin Duncan (5), 

 the arrangement of the soft tissues, and their relation to the 

 corallum has not yet been studied. G, von Koch, it is true, 

 has recently published a few remarks on the subject (23) and 

 gives a figure, but the latter is incorrect in details, and the 

 description merely amounts to a statement that the general 

 anatomy of Fungia corresponds with that of the other Madre- 

 poraria ; he does not attempt to give a detailed description of 

 the internal structure. As any attempt to remodel the classi- 

 fication of the Madreporaria must depend on an intimate know- 

 ledge of the relation of the soft parts to the corallum, I shall 

 give in the following pages as detailed a description of the 

 anatomy as circumstances will permit. 



The family Fungidae was established by Dana in 1846. 

 In his splendidly illustrated work on the ' Zoophytes of the 



