WEST INDIAN ISLANDS PORITES. 59 



magnified photograph of the calicles kindly taken from the type specimen in the Turin Museum 

 by Count Peracca for the purpose of tliis volume. Part of this photograph is reproduced on 

 PI. III. fig. 5, and it will be seen that the calicles agree well with their original Latin 

 description — Parietihus modo tenuihus modo evanidis, inde calyces scepvmvie con/usi — as far as 

 this goes. The specimen was placed into that division of the group described by the authors 

 as septis pallulisque hirtis, calycibus scepe columella destitutis atque omnino super Jmalibus. 



The fusiform swellings of the stems recalls P. Flmida 2. I do not remember having .seen 

 it in any other form. The original description says that the specimen was a foot in height, 

 but the figure (" Grand. Nat") is only about 10 cm. high. But as in the case of their P. valida, 

 the words " Grand. Nat." were probably added by mistake ; see above, p. 56. 



43. Porites St. Thomas 5. (P. Sancti-Thomce quinta.) (PI. III. figs. 6 and 7a; 



PI. XVII. fig. 6.) 



[St. Thomas, coll. Duchassaing and H.M.S. ' Challenger ' ; Turin Museum 



and British Mu.seum.] 



Syn. Porites superjicialis Duchassaing and Michelotti, Mem. sur las Cor. des Antilles (1860) p. 83. 

 Neoporites superjicialis, Suppl. (1864) p. 99. 

 ? Porites astrceoides Quelch, Chall. Rep., xvi. (1886) p. 182. 



Description. — The corallum is encrusting and thick. It spreads out over foreign bodies. 



The calicles are superficial, the fossae not very deep. The septa finely toothed (along their 

 internal edges). The pali few, 1 to 3, or almost obsolete. 



The polyps are of a sulphur or greenish-yellow, with red disks, and yellowish-green 

 tentacles. 



According to the usual method of classification of the "West Indian Porites, this creeping 

 form should be united with the Neoporites incerta of the same authors and from the same 

 locality, and certainly with their Cosmoporites, which refen-ed specially to creeping forms. 

 But once more, this lumping of all creeping, encrusting and massive forms into one species, 

 P. astrmoides, is not classification, but its negation. 



There is, however, great probability that the creeping Porites described by Quelch in the 

 ' Challenger ' Report from this locality is the same. We are not surprised that Quelch called it 

 P. astrceoides.* As a matter of fact, it is like this coral of Duchassaing' s, closely encrusting, 

 and it even envelops the branches of other corals, see PI. XVII. fig. 6. The surface is raised 

 into great numbers of small excrescences, sufficiently crowded to give no flat surface to be 

 photographed. The unbleached part of the ' Challenger ' specimen is a buff colour. If there are 

 any differences between the calicles of the two, they are certainly not easy to see. The 

 varying thickness and textures of the walls, and tlie different sizes of the calicles, seem to have 

 been the same in both, and in both there is a central tubercle, perhaps a little more con- 



a 



• But with this coral in his hand so closely resembling Duchassaing's P. superfici(dL% and even 

 coming from the same locality, it seems strange that he should have applied the name superjicialis to 

 specimen from the Cape Verde Islands, see above, p. 27. 



I 2 



