May 31, 1912] 
Incidentally, for the benefit of botanists, 
who have long abandoned the term ‘‘nulli- 
pore,’’ even though the enforcement of 
priority principles in nomenclature may 
possibly lead to its revival, it may be ex- 
plained that the generic name Nullipora, 
as proposed by Lamarck in 1801, was made 
to include four species of calcareous orga- 
nisms believed by him to be animals, but 
all of which, probably, were plants and 
members of the family Corallinacee of the 
red algwz—the family popularly known as 
the ‘‘coralline seaweeds.’’ Furthermore, 
they were of the subgroup sometimes 
spoken of as the ‘‘unsegmented’’ coral- 
lines, including the numerous forms that 
until recently have passed under the widely 
inclusive generic name Lithothammion, but 
now commonly segregated into smaller 
generic groups known as Lathothammion. 
Inthophyllum, Gonolithon, Phymatohthon, 
ete. But the term ‘‘nullipore,’’ which has 
remained the almost exclusive possession 
of the zoologists and geologists, while ap- 
plied chiefly and properly to the stone-like 
or coral-like red alge, has occasionally been 
made to cover also undoubted animals and 
was used by Alexander Agassiz? to include 
also some of the very different calcified 
green alge. Alexander Agassiz, by the 
way, was one of the first to emphasize the 
importance of ‘‘nullipores’’ in reef-build- 
ing, but the loose way in which he fre- 
quently referred to ‘‘nullipores and alge,”’ 
“‘eorallines and alge’’ may easily have 
hidden from many of his non-botanical 
readers the fact that his ‘‘nullipores’’ and 
““corallines’’ were just as truly algz as are 
any of the species of Fucus. 
But, to return to our main subject, there 
is considerable evidence that the dominance 
and Formation of Coral Reefs in General,’’ Proc. 
Camb. Philos. Soc., Vol. 9, pp. 417-503, 1898. 
° Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harv. Coll., Vol. 14, 
p- 82, 1888. 
SCIENCE 
839 
of plants in building up the ‘‘true coral 
island’’ Funafuti is not an exceptional or 
isolated instance of their activity in this 
direction. Professor Gardiner, in describ- 
ing the reefs of Fiji, in the paper referred 
to above, says: 
The parts of ‘‘compact homogeneous texture’’ 
are very numerous and are formed, I believe, 
mainly by carbonate of lime secreted by incrust- 
ing nullipores. The importance of the incrusting 
nullipores, in the formation of the reefs of the 
Central Pacific can not be overestimated.’ 
Again,® in discussing the foundation of 
atolls in general, Professor Gardiner re- 
marks that 
The chief building organism is Lithothamnion, 
the bathymetrical zone of which must be limited 
to a large degree by the extent to which light can 
penetrate seawater. 
In another ease, 
This nullipore ([Lithophyllum craspedium], 
Finckh says, is actually the reef-former at Onoatoa 
[Gilbert Islands]. He saw no live coral there, 
but everywhere on the lagoon and ocean-face 
immense masses of this particular nullipore.® 
That lme-secreting plants rather than 
corals are sometimes, at least, the dominant 
reef-formers in the Indian Ocean as well 
as the Pacific, is shown by the following 
remark by Professor Gardiner: 
The reefs of the Chagos are in no way peculiar, 
save in their extraordinary paucity of animal life. 
. . However, this barrenness is amply compen- 
sated for by the enormous quantity of nullipores 
(Lithothamnia, ete.) incrusting, massive, mammil- 
lated, columnar and branching. The outgrowing 
seaward edges of the reefs are practically formed 
by their growths and it is not too much to say 
that, were it not for the abundance and large 
masses of these organisms, there would be no 
atolls with surface reefs in the Chagos." 
4 Loc. cit., p. 477. 
5 Loc. cit., p. 501. 
6‘(Mauna and Geography of the Maldive and 
Lacecadive Archipelagoes,’’ Vol. I., p. 462. 
™Trans. Linn. Soc. London, Zool., 2d ser., Vol. 
12, pp. 177, 178, 1907. Also, Nature, Vol. 72, pp. 
571, 572, where a photograph of this Lithotham- 
nion reef is published. 
