﻿PAPILLATE MONTIPOR^. 103 



80. Montipora verrucosa. (PL XIX. fig. 2.) 



Porites verrucosa, Lamarck, Animaux sans Vert., ii. (1816) p. 271. 



Non Montipora verrucosa, de Blainville, Diet. d. Sci. Nat., Ix. (1830) p. 355 {= M. oUusata, Quelch). 



Non Montipora verrucosa, Quoy and Gaimard, Voy. d. I'Astrolabe, Zool., iv. (1833) p. 247 {= M. 



foveolata, Dana). 

 Manopora verrucosa, Dana, Zooph. (1848) p. 506. 

 ? Manopora capitala, Id. op. cit., p. 504. 



? Montipora verrucosa, Milne-Edwards and Haime, Ann. Sci. Nat. (3°) Zool., xvi. (1851) p. 55. 

 Non Montipwa verrucosa, Klunzinger, Korallenthiere, 1879, pt. ii. p. 35; pi. v. figs. 14, 15; pL vi. 



fig. 10 ; pi. X. fig. 7 (= M. venosa). 

 Montipora verrucosa, Quelch, Challenger Report, Eeef Corals (1886) p. 176. 

 Montipoi-a capitata, Quelch, ibid. 



Description. — Corallum may be either thick, explanate and encrusting or massive, the 

 thick but narrov/ free edge being supported by an epitheca. The former method of growth, 

 by the continued encrusting of previous irregular growths, may result in the formation of 

 clumps of irregular, stout, branching processes ; or again, by the edge creeping under the 

 growing mass, free rounded coralla are formed without definite points of attachment, and 

 completely covered by the coral. In the massive method of growth the corallum thickens by 

 the steady growth of the coenenchyma in the more central regions of the colony. 



Calicles numerous, conspicuous as open holes, large (ca. 1 • mm.), deeply immersed, 

 except near the growing edges or on surfaces which have grown in unfavourable positions, in 

 these cases the caKcles are smaller and open on the smooth surface of the coenenchyma. Two 

 and sometimes three cycles of short thick septa, more or less equally developed, projecting but 

 a very little way into the polyp cavity, and leaving a large open fossa in the depths of which 

 the septa fuse to form an irregular columella. Adjoining calicles are sometimes separated 

 from one another by a single thin perforated plate. Tabulae may be formed in the lengthening 

 calicles of massive growths. 



The ccenenchyma shows the usual streaming layer, which bends upwards towards the 

 surface, attaining in the massive forms a great thickness (6 to 7 cm.). This reticulum 

 is slightly echiuulate at the surface. The interstices usually swell up into nearly sym- 

 metrical nipple-shaped papillae from 2 to 3 mm. high and 2 mm. thick. These papillae 

 exactly fiU up an interstice, their walls descending directly into the polyp cavities. They are 

 variously developed, sometimes crowded, and irregularly swollen and fused. As the corallum 

 thickens in the massive forms the polyp cavities fill up with a very loose open tissue (colu- 

 mella formation) which is in marked contrast to that of the solid reticulum, which streams 

 so directly upwards as here and there almost to suggest the presence of trabeculse. 



There are eleven specimens which are here combined together in spite of the differences 

 in the method of growth. The characters which unite them are the symmetrical nipples 



