Ii8 Ci)icinnati Society of Natural flistory. 



ON THE MONTICULIPOROID CORALS OFTHE CINCIX- 

 NATI GROUP, WITH A CRITICAL REVISION OF THE 

 SPECIES. 



Bv CJ. P. James AND Joseph F. James, M. Sc, Prof, of Geology 

 and Botany in Miami University, Oxford, O. 



(Read by Title, July 5, 1887.) 



The group of fossils known under the general name of the 

 Monticuliporoids, presents a wonderfiUh diversified series of forms. 

 Not many years ago they were considered too obscure and too 

 difficult for the ordinary student, and collectors, as a rule, paid 

 little attention to them. One of us was among the first to call at- 

 tention to them : and in 187 i issued a catalogue of the "Fossils of 

 the Cincinnati Group", the first of its kind, in which were named 

 provisionally, a few new species. A second edition of the " Cat- 

 alogue" was published in 1875, ^"^ here two of the ])reviously 

 named species, and two new ones were described. In the same 

 year the second volume of the Ohio Palaeontology was issued, and 

 in this Prof. H. Alleyne Nicholson described and figured a num- 

 ber of species under the generic name of Clurtetcs, adopting some of 

 the names proposed in the catalogue of 1871. Between 1875 and 

 1 88 1 were issued various papers or volumes containing descrip- 

 tions of other new species, and in the latter year was published a 

 monograph on the genus Monticuliporahy Prof. Nicholson. In this 

 volume, by far the most valuable account of this group of fossils 

 which has yet appeared, we have chapters giving a general history 

 oi Monticulipora and its allies, an account of the general structure 

 of the genus and its development, a division of, the genus into five 

 sub-genera with the characters of each, and detailed descriptions 

 with figures, of forty-three species, thirty-three of which are found 

 in the immediate vicmity of Cincinnati. Finally, Mr. E. O. 

 Ulrich began, in 1882, in the fifth volume of the Journal of the Cin- 

 cinnati Society of Natural History a series of articles entitled 

 " American Palaeozoic Bryozoa," which was continued through the 

 si.\th and into the seventh volume, 1884. Mr. Ulrich considered 

 the Monticuliporoids as Bryozoa instead of Corals, and in the course 

 of his investigations divided and sub-divided the old genus Monti 

 culip07'a into a multitude, no less than eighteen, different genera. 

 At the same time a host of species was described, most of them 



