﻿112 MADEEPOEARIA. 



86. Montipora tuberculosa. 



Poriks tuberculosa, Lamarck, Anim. sans Vert., ii. (1816) p. 272. 



Montipora tuberculosa, de Blainville, Man. (1834) p. 388. 



Non Manopora tuberculosa, Dana (= M. datm). Zoophytes (1848) p. 506. 



1 Montipora tuberculosa, Milne-Edwards and Haime, Ann. d. Sci. Nat., (3') xvi. (1851) p. 58. 



Non Montipora tuberculosa, Klunzinger, ' Korallenthiere des Rothen Meeres,' pt. 2 (1879) p. 32. 



Non Montipora tuberculosa, Ortmann, Zool. Jahrb., iv. (Syst.) (1889) p. 498. 



Description. — CoraUum " incrustans, rudis, indivisa " ; calicles minute. 

 Interstices covered with tall, columnar, spiny tubercles. 



The tubercles, scattered over the surface lilve gi-ains, often unite to form crests or 

 eminences. 



Of the specimens labelled M. tuberculosa in the Paris Museum, two (Nos. 259a and 

 259/) are almost certainly the original types. They are two fragments of a corallum 1 cm. 

 thick, closely encrusting, the calicles • 4 mm. in diameter, crowded, about 1 diameter apart, 

 margin irregular, interseptal loculi opening freely into the surface reticulum. Primaries 

 conspicuous, well developed, sometimes exsert, one or two directives, one always exsert, visible 

 to the naked eye, and laminate. The section shows a laminate but much perforated streaming 

 layer, a coarse, almost trabecular, upper thickeniug layer, while the upper surface, which has 

 suffered considerably in the coiu'se of so many years, is an open reticulum as if formed of the 

 turned-up edges of jagged flakes. The papHlse are 1 mm. in height, • 75 mm. in tluckness, 

 taU, elegant, symmetrical, but somewhat scattered columns. In section they are like bundles 

 of flakes fused longitudinally and irregularly along the axes of the papillae, their jagged edges 

 forming the lateral echinulse. Their fusion into crests and eminences is not now very 

 apparent, owiag to abrasion of the surface. 



This type is allied to M. sinensis and M. dbrotanoides by its thin columnar papillae. It 

 differs from these in manner of growth, and from the former in the character of the calicles. 



The terms in which Lamarck referred to these papiUse, led me at first to believe that 

 the type must have been tuberculate, as that term is here defined.* His speaking of the 

 surface being scattered over with gi'aniform tubercles was especially misleading to me, as 

 this so exactly describes the appearance in such tuberculate types as M. peliiformis, 

 M. granuloma, and M. cequi-tuberculata. 



The other specimens in the Paris Museum, provisionally associated with these two 

 original types of Lamarck, appear to me to represent undescribed species. 



* On this subject, see Introductory Remarks, p. 9, and footnote. 



