764 SUMMARY OF CUKKENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 



from littoral and sub-littoral zones around Australia. These are included 

 in i;i genera and 9 families. Eight of these families, including 18 of 

 the L9 genera, belong to the sub-order Oligophreata. Twenty of the 

 spirits and one of the genera are only known from Australia, but the 

 latter is closely allied to two other genera characteristic of the East 

 Indian region. The proportionate frequency of the genera and species 

 in the several families is entirely different from what is found in other 

 parts of the world. The great majority of the Australian Orinoids are 

 tropical species, which have extended their range southward from the 

 East Indian region, and they are therefore limited to the coast of 

 Queensland on the east, and the coast north of Dirk Hartog Island on 

 the west. The southern coasts are tenanted by seven species peculiar to 

 Australia, but belonging to one endemic and four tropical genera, which 

 lend to that region an aspect very characteristic, and yet without any 

 special zoogeographical significance. 



Ccelentera. 



Development of Cunina parasitica.* — P. Hanitsch discusses this 

 extraordinary life-history. He takes up a median position between 

 those who call the Cunina a parasite in the Geryonia and those who 

 regard the association as symbiotic. He deals with the development of 

 the constricted-off Cunina proboscidea Metsch., its production of a second 

 generation of C. proboscidea, their production of C. parasitica ( = a third 

 generation of C. proboscidea), their production of the so-called budding 

 polyp in the stomach of Geryonia, which buds off what we started with. 

 But the alternation of generations is so intricate that we cannot do more 

 than indicate the general nature of this new contribution to a much- 

 investigated subject. 



New Type of Alcyonarian. f—S. J. Hickson describes Ceratopora 

 nicholsonii g. et sp. n., a remarkable new type of Alcyonarian. A single 

 specimen was obtained by the ' Blake,' off Cuba, 100 fathoms. It was 

 referred to by Agassiz as probably a Bryozoon, and by Alleyne Nicholson 

 (in letters to Sir John Murray) as probably allied to Helioporidas. 



It has remarkable, indeed unique, calcareous spicules, minute, very 

 slender, and tuberculate, which are embedded vertically in the walls of 

 very narrow tubes. The definition of the proposed new family Cerato- 

 poridse is as follows : " Ccenothecalia forming a massive skeleton of 

 crystalline calcium carbonate, in which a few slender spicules are em- 

 bedded. No tabulge, the tubes closing below by the continuous growth 

 of the thecal walls. Pores monoinorphic and small (in the type species 

 0*2 mm. in diameter). 



The genus Ceratopora differs from Heliopora in the presence of 

 spicules, in the monoinorphic condition of the pore, in the absence of 

 tabuhe, and the complete closure of the tubes below. The small size 

 of the tubes is verv striking. Indeed, the small size of the zooids is 

 one of the principal difficulties in accepting the view that the new type 

 is an Alcyonarian. 



* MT. Zool. Stat. Neapel., xx. (1911) pp. 204-50 (2 pis. and 9 figs.). 

 t Proc. Roy. Soc, Series B, lxxxiv. pp. 95-200 (1 pi. and 5 figs.). 



