﻿110 MADEEPORARIA. 



the septa tliicker, more laminate and exsert. Its papillae further show a similar tendency to 

 run in ridges towards the growing edge. It also shows traces of having been tinned with rose- 

 pink in life. It is apparently encrusting a dense mass of Alcyonarian spicules. 



a. Tizard Bank, China Sea, 8 fathoms. H.M.S. ' Eambler.' 



h. Palm Island, Great Barrier Eeef. Coll. Saville-Kent. 



Note. — The fragment {h) catalogued under M. Brucggevianni, p. 74, shows the same 

 irregular ridges at the growing edge as a, as if produced by shrinkage of the surface, and 

 may belong here. As above stated, it is too small to classify with any certainty. 



84. Montipora abrotanoides. 



Madrepora abrotanoides, Audouin (non Lamarck), Savigny's Egypt, Expl. des planches (1809) p. 233 ; 



Polypes, pi. iv. fig. 4. 

 Manopora nudiceps, Dana, Zoophytes (1848) p. 505. 

 Montipora crista-galli, MOne-Edwards and Haime Irwn Ehrenberg), Ann. des Sciences Nat., xvi. 



(1851) p. 56. 



Description. — Corallum forming compact tufts of often cylindrical branches, fusing freely 

 together. 



Calicles are very distinct and deep, with only six well developed primaries reaching to 

 about the half radius circle. 



Ccenenchyma sends up tall, tliin, cyliadrical, reticular papHlce, which rise up in the 

 middle of the interstices and not immediately in contact with the calicles ; the surface 

 reticulum is loose and open. The rounded tips of the branches consist of smooth reticulum 

 with calicles opening in it, but without papiUse. 



Neither Ehrenberg nor Elunzinger were able to discover any Eed Sea coral like the 

 specimen so beautifully figured in Savigny's atlas, and identified by Audouia as Lamarck's 

 Madrepora abrotanoides. Dana first recognised it as a Manopore (= Montipore). There is no 

 reason to doubt that Savigny has given an accurate drawing of the peculiar ccenenchymatous 

 specialisation of the specimen, viz. the single long cylindrical papilla rising up from the middle 

 of a level reticulate interstice. There is one specimen in the Museum Collection from the Eed 

 Sea, which may, I think, be claimed as specifically identical. It was fonnerly labelled by 

 Briiggemann, M. stylosa, Ehr. But Klunzinger's fresh description of Ehrenberg's types shows 

 tins to be incorrect. The Museum specimen is not a compact tuft of cylindrical columns, but 

 may easily have developed from such. It is a corroded mass forming a fork, with one prong 

 thick and broken into irregular lobes or branches at the tip, and with a living layer 5 cm. deep. 

 On the tip of the other prong the living cap is only 1 cm. deep. The dead portions seem to 

 have been killed by a colonial actinarian, the spreading skin of which, with the shrivelled and 

 dried polyps, are clinging to the specimen. Lender these abnormal conditions the' form of 

 the specimen may be left out of account, and we have to fall back on other characters. Most 

 noticeable is the presence of the cylindrical ccenenchymatous papiUse, closely resembling those 



