Abstract
MR. W. SAVILLE KENT read a paper at a recent meeting of the Zoological Society on various new species of Madrepores, or Stony Corals, met with by himself while engaged upon arranging, naming, and cataloguing the fine series contained in the British Museum. Among the more interesting of these, commencing with the family of Turbinolidae, Mr. Kent drew attention to a fine species of Acanthocyathus from Japan, more closely allied to a Maltese Miocene form (A. Hastingsd) than to any known existing one; and also to a Flabellum allied to F. Anthophyllites, whose most remarkable feature rests in the phenomena connected with its reproduction by the process of gemmation, which invariably results in the destruction of the parent; the reproductive bud always originating within the margin of the parent calyx, which, in the course of its development, it splits to pieces. For this aberrant form Mr. Kent proposes the appropriate name of Flabellum matricidum. In the family of the Oculinidae, which comprises the majority of the species introduced by Mr. Kent, are three new forms of Allopora and numerous ones of Stylaster, Distichopora and Amphihelia, the first-named genus in particular containing a magnificent arborescent species, upwards of a foot in height, of a delicate rose colour, having a stem of such thickness and of such dense consistence that Mr. Kent is of the opinion that, if procurable in any quantity, it may eventually prove of high economic value, and even replace to some extent the well-known Corallium rubrnm. The examination of these new varieties has enabled Mr. Kent to define more precisely the characters of Allopora and its true distinctions from Stylaster, Distichopora, and other allied genera. In all, Mr. Kent introduces some twenty species as new to science.
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New Species of Madrepore . Nature 3, 492 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/003492a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003492a0