188 THE OCEAN WORLD. 
In Madrepora palmata, vulgarly named Neptune’s Car, we have 
a large and beautiful species, whose expanding branches are flat, 
round at the base, and formed into lobes, whose length is often as 
much as three feet high, with a breadth of twenty inches, and a 
Fig. 72.—Porites furcata (Lamarck), natural size. 
thickness of two to two and a halt: this fine madrepore is found in 
the Caribbean Sea and among the Antilles, 
Here also comes Astreopora punctifera, Fig. 64, p. 180. 
The genus Porites belong to the second family Poritine of the 
perforated madrepores, the polypidom is entirely formed by a reticu- 
lated sclerenchyma, the animal is somewhat pitcher-shaped, with 
twelve short tentacula ; the cells are unequally polygonal, imperfectly 
