CORALS FROM MURRAY, COCOS-KEELING, AND FANNING GLANDS. 57 



The Albatross collection, made in the Hawaiian Islands in 1902, was 

 the incentive to my "Madreporaria of the Hawaiian Islands and Laysan," 

 but Professor W. T. Brigham greatly added to the suites of reef corals. That 

 paper was based on the study of about 2,000 specimens, nearly all of which 

 are in the U. S. National Museum. Only a few corals were obtained in 

 the eastern Pacific in 1904-1905, but I reported on them in a paper cited in 

 the bibliography on page 61. 



The collections from the Philippine Islands are large. In 1901 about 

 3,000 specimens were purchased from Mr. J. B. Steere; the Albatross, 

 besides the dredged material, obtained a number of shoal-water corals in 

 1907-1908; and numerous small lots have been received from army and 

 navy officers and other persons, among whom Col. E. A. Mearns and Mr. 

 Albert M. Reese should be specially mentioned. The collection made by Mr. 

 Reese at Mariveles, Luzon, is good and appears to represent well that locality. 

 I have, while studying material fromother localities, worked over most of these 

 collections except the Perforata, of which I have identified only a few species. 



In addition to the collections already mentioned, there are many smaller 

 ones. Among these is one made by Dr. W. L. Abbott in the western Indian 

 Ocean, probably at Aldabra. 



An inspection of this list shows that, although the collections from the 

 Pacific area (including the Philippines and the Fiji Islands and eastward 

 from them) are large, there was in the U. S. National Museum almost 

 nothing from Australia; from the Indian Ocean there were only the small lot 

 obtained by Dr. Abbott near Aldabra and some duplicates from French 

 Somaliland, received from Dr. Charles Gravier; and there still is very little 

 from the Red Sea. The deficiencies for Australia and the Indian Ocean are 

 largely remedied by the collections received from Dr. Mayer and Dr. Wood 

 Jones. Professor Stanley Gardiner has sent to the U. S. National Museum 

 a set of corals, labeled by Mr. George Matthai, representing most of the 

 species described by the latter in his paper entitled, "A revision of the recent 

 colonial Astraeidae possessing distinct corallites."' This is valuable for our 

 collections, as the specimens come from the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea, 

 and because by having them I am able to understand more definitely Mr. 

 Matthai's text and figures. 



The general collections of the Museum have been utilized in making 

 comparisons, and in a few instances I have incorporated descriptions of 

 species from localities not indicated in the title of this paper; an instance is 

 Favia viatthaii, from the western Indian Ocean, probably Aldabra. As this 

 is primarily a zoogeographic study, I have felt it germane to include any 

 material, so far as practicable, which would aid in achieving its purpose. I 

 have, therefore, endeavored to supplement Mr. Matthai's paper, just referred 

 to, by including descriptions and figures of Dana's and Verrill's types, 

 whenever it seemed desirable for a better understanding of the subject. 



'Trans. Linn. Soc. London, 2d ser., Zool., voL 17, part I, pp. 1-140, 38 pis. 



