PORITES. 11 



metliod led to a rcdudio ad. ahsnrdum. I refer to Dr. Wayland Vaughan,* who probably has 

 a wider knowledge of the Stony Corals, recent and fossil, than any living student of the subject. 

 His attitude is interesting. While formally accepting the perfectly logical conclusions of so 

 distinguished a naturalist as Dr. Gregory, t he in reality sets to work to begin agam. In 

 passing, be it noted that instead of agreeing tliat all the branching forms should be called 

 P. clavaria, he prefers to call them Pnrites poritcs, that name having the priority. With this 

 altered general specific name, he begins to divide the forms according to theri- morphological 

 differences in the following manner : P. poritcs forma davaria, forma furcata, forma divaricata, 

 and so on ; while, further, he agrees with Dr. Eathbun in claiming that the name astrmoides 

 will not cover all the encrusting forms, and he again excludes the Brazilian form above men- 

 tioned. In addition to some excellent figures, which are a solid contribution to our knowledge, 

 he further makes a valuable observation that the two branching forms found by him at 

 Porto Rico, and called forma davaria and forma furcata, were quite distinct and showed no 

 sif^ns of intergrading. This helps to confirm the observation of Dr. Eathbun, that there are 

 distinct local forms. 



I claim, then, that Dr. Vaughan has realised the necessity of beginning again and attempt- 

 ing to classify the different forms presented by nature. In that path I have followed, though 

 my work has compelled me to clear the way in a manner which he did not attempt. 



In the first place I have rejected the time-honoured names davaria, furada, divaricata, 

 etc. They were the names suggested by the most obvious and superficial morphological factors 

 —the first and simplest which came to hand. They were here necessarily given up, inasmuch 

 as I found them crude and misleading. That they are misleading we have already shown (p. 6). 

 That they are too crude can be seen by a glance at the Plates IX. to XVI. A perusal of these 

 figures makes it at once apparent that such a multitude of different growth-forms could never 

 be classified by such terms. Indeed, Dr. Vaughan's treatise above referred to is practically a 

 confession of the failure of such names. The interesting branching forms from Cura^oa, one 

 long ago figured by Seba (see below PL XVII. fig. 3), and the other discovered by himself, 

 completely baffled him, and he could not decide whether they were davaria or furcata, or 

 what (I.e. p. 315). 



In the second place, I have claimed to work independently of that whole tissue of species 

 which has been drawn like an entangling network over the whole subject. Whatever basis of 

 real fact may underlie the species— and the local forms may now be regarded as the long-sought- 

 for reality, the existence of which was dimly apprehended in the meaning of the term —I regard 

 the ordinary conception of them as " species " as, for practical purposes, wholly imaginary, be- 

 cause woven out of imaginary units. The genetic inter-relationships, which are the essential 

 connotation of the " species," are far too vague and intangible, at least in the Corals, to form 



* U.S. Fish Commi-ssion Bulletin for 1900, ii. p. 314. Dr. Duerden's excellent work on West 

 Indian Corals is mainly developmental, and not systematic. 



t Who, in his last great work on Corals (see Paleont. Indica, 9, ii.) expresses his regret that 

 he did not throw over species altogether, so far as Corals are concerned. 



C 2 



