42' M ADREPORARIA. 



The value of Milne-Edwards' description of " Goniopora viridis " is seriously impaired 

 by the fact that he joined the specimen from Vanikoro with another from New Guinea, and 

 gave a joint description ! They are, fortunately, both preserved in the Paris Museum, Nos. 

 1786 and 178a respectively.* The former of these is the original of Quoy and Gaimard. It 

 looks like the swelling top of a columnar Goniopora sawn off. At the growing top it is very 

 friable and ragged, and suggests an approach to the sheaf method of growth (see Introduction, 

 p. 26). The calicles are here rather deep funnel-shaped. At the sides they are shallow, and 

 from 4-4 • 5 mm. across. The characters of the septa are unique : they are very perforated and 

 lattice-like, and their edges run out into ragged filaments, those forming the uppermost layer 

 of the columellar tangle being specially fine and delicate. In the original figure of a vertical 

 section of a calicle, the septa are shown as if meeting and forming a continuous perforated 

 plate right across the fossa. This is not correct. The division between two opposite septal 

 edges remains distinct. I made no note as to there being more than 24 septa (cf. the fact that 

 48 tentacles are figured by Quoy and Gaimard). 



Milne- Edwards called attention to the resemblance between this coral and " G. lobata," I 

 find that the resemblance between this coral and the Red Sea form G. Bed Sea 1, which 

 Dr. Klunzinger identified with G. lobata, is recorded in my Paris notes. 



Type specimen in the Paris Museum, No. 178&. 



9. Goniopora Loyalty Islands (1) 1. (PI. I. fig. 4 ; PI. XL fig. 4.) 

 [Sandal Bay, Lifu, Loyalty Islands, coll. Willey ; Cambridge University Museum.] 



Description. — The living layer forms a long, narrow, rather smooth, bolster-like ridge, the 

 growth dying away on one side, but apparently rolling over with a thick drooping edge on the 

 other. A thick, chalky pellicular epitheca, covering the dying surface, sinks deeply into the 

 calicles. 



The calicles angular, average about 3 mm. in diameter, very deep, 4-5 mm., and conical ; 

 deep even at the sides, where the colony is dying down. Walls on the top sharp, — thicker 

 and striated by septa at the sides, — very steep, stout, fenestrated. The sharper margins 

 very slightly and coarsely toothed by the tops of the 24 narrow septal ridges, which are 

 slightly serrated, or bluntly granulated, and only just project from the wall. The tertiaries 

 mostly die away before reaching the base of the fossa, while the primaries become slightly 

 more prominent, and eventually curve outwards to join a columellar tangle, and may form a 

 6-rayed star upon the columella. The secondaries also join the columella, and, in sections, 

 one finds 12 clear, rounded, interseptal loculi, with slight traces of tertiaries which unite 

 almost immediately with the secondaries. Paliform granules not specially conspicuous. 

 Young calicles appear both in the angles and round the growing edge as small, deep conical 

 pits, sharply defined, not as irregular breaks in any reticulum, except when very minute. 



The corallum, though heavy and solid, owing to the thickness of the skeletal elements, 

 has a somewhat open texture, owing to the size of the interseptal loculi. 



* For the description of 1 78a, sec <!. New Guinea 2, p. 37. 



