GENERAL HISTORY. 9 



ous other similar titles, that it would be a real gain to science 

 if there could be a general aoreement that desiornations of this 

 kind — published, in the first place, with wholly insufficient 

 definitions, and subsequently employed by others in widely 

 different senses — should be dropped altogether, and that no 

 attempt should be made to revive them. I know that there is 

 much that could be urged on the other side of this question 

 and that it mio;ht be difficult to draw a line between cases such 

 as I now speak of, and others where the original author had 

 simply made more or less serious errors in the definition of his 

 species ; but I feel sure that every working naturalist must 

 have experienced the hardship of finding himself confronted 

 by specific names, which he cannot identify by reference to 

 original descriptions, and which others have obviously applied 

 to more than one class of objects ; and I think it would not be 

 very difficult to specify the cases in which this hardship is so 

 great that the abandonment of the original name becomes a 

 proper remedy for it. 



In 1854, Milne-Edwards and Haime published the conclud- 

 ing portion of their admirable ' Monograph of the British 

 Fossil Corals,' dealinor with the corals of the Silurian 

 formation. This work is chiefly deserving of notice 

 in this connection because its authors here (p. 264) retracted 

 the opinion which they had previously expressed as to the 

 identity of MonticiUipora, D'Orb., with Chcetetes, Fischer, and 

 accepted the former genus as sufficiently distinguished by its 

 gemmiparous method of reproduction. The species which 

 they describe are M. petropolitana, Pand., M. papillata, M'Coy, 

 M. Fletcheri, E. & H., M. pulchella, E. & H., and M. Bower- 

 banki, E. & H. ; while they reproduce M 'Coy's descriptions of 

 his M. i^Nebulipora) cxplaiiata and M. {Ncbulipord) lens. Of 

 the above-mentioned forms, M. Boiverbanki, as I have else- 

 where shown (Pal. Tab. Cor., p. 72), is a Favosites, while M. 

 pulchella is a valid and genuine species of Monticulipora ; but 

 the forms described under the names of Af. pch^opolitana, Pand., 

 M. papillata, M'Coy, and M. Fletcheri, E. & H., must remain 



