A Qeneral History of the Marine Polyzoa. 471 



at intervals to clusters of two to five suberect branchlets, and 

 their distal extremities are arcuate, 3 to 3'5 centim. long, and 

 divided into branclilets, which, like the more central ones, arc 

 2 to 3 centim, long and scarcely 5 millim. thick ; apices 6 to 

 7 millim. apart. Up|)er surface of the main branches and 

 base of the branclilets provided with numerous large immersed 

 corallitcs, with an aperture of 1 millim. Apical corallites 

 about 2 millim. diameter, usually about 1 millim. exsert. 

 Lateral corallites ascending, elongate, labellate, and imbri- 

 cate, 3 to 4 millim. long and 1*5 millim. thick^ apices more or 

 less pointed. Corallum very porous and reticulate in section, 

 surface densely echinulate; wall thin, finely striato-reticulate 

 and echinulate, except in the case of the younger ones. Star 

 not recognizable in the prominent corallites ; in the immersed 

 ones it consists of six very narrow septa. 



Two specimens have the apices of some of the branchlets 

 subdivided ; in a third the majority arc proliferous and some 

 of the apical corallites rather over 2 millim. in diameter. 



Mauritius. 



LV. — Contributions towards a General History of the Marine 

 Polyzoa, 1880-91. — Appendix. By the Rev. Thomas 

 HiNCKS, B.A., F.R.S. 



[Continued from p. 176.] 

 * Annals,' July 1881 (p. 55 sep.). 



Hiantopora ferox, MacGilli vray. 



In a previous paragraph I have pointed out that this form 

 cannot be referred to Cribrilina, from which genus it has 

 been rightly separated by MacGillivray. Since it was 

 written I have seen Mr. Kirkpatrick's Report on the Polyzoa 

 from Torres Straits collected by Professor Haddou*, in which 

 he ranks Hiantopora ferox as a variety of Membranipora 

 radicijera, Hincks. The connexion between these two very 

 dissimilar species he supposes to be established by the dis- 

 covery of a variety of M. radicifera, to which he has given 

 the name intermedia. Granting that the latter is, as Mr. 

 Kirkpatrick supposes, a variety of M. radicifera, the further 

 development and fusion of its spinous processes may have 

 originated a form bearing a general resemblance to H. 

 ferox. Beyond this, I confess, 1 am not prepared to go. 

 J\lr. Kirkpatrick goes much further ; he assumes that 



* 'Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society,' vol. ri. part 10. 



