ROMINGER'S DIAGNOSIS OF THE (.EM'S. '1'u 



reposing on the granulose prominences of the surface of another, and more inti- 

 mately connecting in the linear furrows between the plications, which correspond 

 to the interlamellar spaces of other zoantharia rugosa, but were confused by 

 Billings with the lamellse. 



Zittel gives in liis Handbuch* a brief description of Chonophyllum 

 which agrees with that of Pictet. We have been unable to find any 

 recognition of the genus in the publications of Professor H. A. Nicholson. 

 Mr. S. A. Miller, in his "North American Geology and Paleontology,""}" 

 gives a new lease of life to the antiquated description of Edwards and 

 Haime. 



In 1852! Professor James Hall founded his genus Conophyllum 

 {■•(■miiis and folium; in allusion to the inverted conical septa "), and 

 described the single species Conophyllum niagarense: After describing 

 their Chonophyllum ellipticum in 1873 Hall and Whitfield add: "This 

 genus is apparently identical with Chonophyllum, Hall, Paleontology <>f 

 New York, vol. 2, published in 1852, though actually in print more 

 than two years earlier.'"^ Either from this note or from the nearly 

 identical name, Halbs genus has been quite generally confused with that 

 of Edwards and Haime. The species upon which it was founded will 

 be shown presently to be a Cystiphyllum, so that it can in no sense be 

 regarded as a synonym. 



( 'onfrouted with this unsatisfactory condition of the generic literature, 

 we begin our labors upon the genus. 



Type Species. 



The celebrated French paleontologists who founded the genus gave as 

 the type"( 'honophyllum \n rfoliatum ; < 'yathophyllum perfoliatum, < ioldf, tab. 

 xviii, fig. 5." This species, previously referred to, was founded upon a 

 single specimen from the Upper Silurian (Niagara) of the island of Got- 

 land. Sweden, and now deposited in the museum of Bonn university. 

 The figure of Goldfuss shows that the septa, instead of being lamellar 

 plates as in typical rugose corals, are formed by a series of superposed 

 layers, convex upward, and curved downward at their edges to form 

 the side faces of each septum. This structure is also shown, but Less 

 clearly, in a photograph kindly prepared forme by Professor Carl Schliiter, 

 of Bonn university (see plate 8, figure 1) . We regard it as one of the 

 chief characteristics of the genus Chonophyllum. in a letter of May 10, 

 1890, Dr. Gustav Lindstrom, of Stockholm, writes that in his last cata- 



il i mil h del Palseontologie band i, 1880, p. 229. 



I 1889, p. 177. 



Paleontology of New York, vol. ii, L852, i>. ill. 

 ; Twenty-I liird Reporl on i ii ■ State Cabinet ol New York for L8C9, 1873, p. 23U. 



