148 
Transactions of the Society. 
V. — On the Variations observed in large Masses of Turbinaria. 
By F. Jeffrey Bell, M.A., Sec. R.M.S. 
(Bead 20 th March , 1895.) 
Plates II. and III. 
In the closing month of 1893 and the opening of 1894, the Trustees 
of the British Museum were so fortunate as to have sent them by 
Mr. Savile Kent some remarkably large specimens of Madrepora 
and of Turbinaria , to the acquisition of which he had been incited 
by Dr. Gunther, F.B.S., the Keeper of the Zoological Department. 
"While the great size of some of these specimens gives them a 
peculiar interest, I desire to draw particular attention to the most 
important lesson which they teach in a very forcible way, and that is 
that great differences in the form of calicles may he seen in every few 
square centimetres of any one mass, and in any part of it. The two 
plates which illustrate this note show this point very much better than 
anything I could say, and the moral which the systematist should draw 
from it is so obvious that there can he no need to press that point. 
From the point of view of a curator of a public museum — the 
interest which specimens excite and the information they give — it may 
he said that these recent accessions will produce a far truer idea of 
the composition and appearance of a Coral Reef than the fragments, 
rarely of any considerable size, which have been sent home in the 
spirit in which the Greek brought a brick of the house he wished to 
sell. Now we have in the British Museum two specimens of 
Turbinaria mesenterina which occupy irregularly shaped areas, the 
boundaries of which are respectively 16 ft. and 16 ft. 8 in.* 
It is the vision of objects such as these that gives rise to the natural 
and convincing remark, “ Now I know why ships are destroyed by 
coral reefs.” It is not with corals as with whales ; take only a 
vertebra of a whale, and the imagination can shape a not erroneous 
figure of its former owner ; chip a v flat, free expansion of a coral, and 
no man is likely to guess that it came from a mass which, when dry 
and dead, weighed as much as 1500 lb.f 
Explanation of Plates. 
Plate II. — A piece of Turbinaria mesenterina reduced to 2/3 of its natural size. 
Plate III. — A piece of another mass of the same species reduced to 1/3 of its 
natural size. 
* In the Report of the Madras Government Museum for 1893-4 I read that there 
is now exhibited in that Museum an example of Montipora exserta which measures 
38 by 33 in. 
f The following are the details as to the weight of the Turbinarise : — The two 
specimens of T. bifrons weighed respectively 3J cwt. or 364 lb., and 5| cwt. or about 
600 lb. ; of the two specimens of T. mesenterina the weights were 12 cwt. or 1344 lb., 
and 13f cwt. or about 1500 lb., or nearly 700 kg. 
