56 



CHAPTER III. 



DEVELOPMENT, AFFINITIES, AND SYSTEMATIC POSITION 

 OF MONTICULIPORA. 



DEVELOPMENT. 



The subject of the development of the Monficiiiiporo', so far as 

 we can be said to know anything about it, is so closely con- 

 nected with the subject of the systematic relations of the genus, 

 that I shall here introduce the little I have to say on this head. 

 My own actual observations upon this point, indeed, have been 

 principally made in connection with an examination into the 

 views published upon this subject by Dr Gustav Lindstrom 

 (Ann. Nat. Hist., sen 4, vol, xviii. p. 5 et seq.); and as I find 

 myself in this matter unable to accept the conclusions of the 

 distinguished Swedish palaeontologist, it is only just that I 

 should quote his account of the development of Monliciilipora 

 at length. Upon this point he remarks : — 



" If numerous specimens of the common M. petropolitana, 

 Pand., be closely scrutinised, it will be seen that its semi-globose 

 colony, so closely resembling a Favosites in its initial develop- 

 ment, has an origin that could hardly be suspected. It begins, 

 indeed, as a Bryozoon, as a Discoporella, as what Hall has 

 termed Ceramopora inibricata (Pal. N.Y., vol. ii. p. 169, PI. 40 

 E, figs. I a-\ i). There can be no doubt that this is closely 

 allied to the recent Discoporclla (see Fr. Smitt, Ofv, Vet. Akad, 

 Forhand., 1866, p. 476, PI. XI. fig. 4). The basal surface of 

 a Montictilipora^ when the epitheca is very thin, clearly shows 



