MILLEPORA, in natural history, a ge nus of insects of the Vermes Zoophyte class and order. Animal an hydra or polype; coral mostly branched, and co vered with many cylindrical turbinated pores; hence its name, a thousand pores. There are more than thirty species, of which we shall notice M. miniacea, very minute, branching into small lobes, and covered with very small pores. This is an inhabitant of the Mediterranean and Indian Seas; is a beautiful little coral, and the smallest of the genus, being sel dom more than a quarter of an inch high ; the whole surface when magnifi ed appears full of white blind pores, and on the tops of the lobes are several scattered holes surrounded with a mar gin ; the base is broad, by which it ad heres to shells, corals, and rocks. M. cervicornis; a little compressed, decho. tomous, with cells on both sides, and tu bular, somewhat prominent florets. It
is found in the Mediterranean and on the Cornish coast five or six inches high : reddish or yellowish brown, branched like the horns of a stag, and appearing as if covered with varnish. M. poly morpha ; crustaceous, solid, irregularly shaped, but generally branched and tu berculate, and without visible pores; in. habits most European seas, and is the com mon coral of the shops; in many places it grows in such abundance that it is burnt for manure ; its colour is either red, yel lowish green, and sometimes white. It is frequently shaped like a walnut, often in large compressed masses. sometimes like a small bunch of grapes, but most frequently in short irregular ramifications, of a chalky tuisercutate appearance and stony substance.