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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



group as Corals, and the opposite as Bryozoans. We shall con- 

 sider them as corals, and before taking up the individual species, 

 desire to make a few remarks upon the families into which the 

 group has been divided, for the group is an eminently natural one, 

 and the families quite as eminently artificial. The distinctions 

 upon which these families have been based are trivial in the ex- 

 treme; so much so indeed that they are the merest superficial char- 

 acters, which, in many another case, would scarcely be considered 

 generic. We therefore propose to wipe them all out, and reduce 

 two families Fistuliporidce and Ceramopofidce to the one main one 

 MonticuUporidar^ We shall show, however, the grounds upon 

 which this is done, by pointing out the characters said to distin- 

 guish each, arranging them in parallel columns, and putting in 

 italics those features common to two or all. In this way we may 

 see how little reason there is for making more than the one family. 



If now we analyze these three families, we are immediately 

 struck with the similarity in all. The general form of the coral- 

 lum is the same. The cell apertures are similar, the projecting lips 



* The first two of these were established by Mr. E. O. Ulrich, in 18S2. See J. C. S. 

 N. H., V. 156. The third was used by Nicholson in 1879, see Tabulate Corals, p. 255. 



