66 A. jEJ. Verrlll — BermncUan and West Indian Reef Corals. 



Subfamily Meeandrinae Ver., nom. nov. 



Maeandriform corals with indistinct ealicinal centers and confluent 

 zooids. Tentacles mostly in parallel rows. 



Mseandra Oken (emended.) Type, M. labyn'nthiformis (L.). " Brain Corals." 



Mycedium (jjcirs) Browne, Civil and Nat. Hist. Jamaica, 1756 ; ed. 2, 1789, 



{no7i Oken). 

 Mceandra (pars) Oken, Lelirb. Naturg., p. 70, 1815. 

 Meandrina (pars) Lam., ii, p. 244, 1816, (not of 1801.) 

 Mceandra {pars) + Manicina {pars) Elirenberg, Corall. Roth. Meeres, pp. 99, 



101, 1834. 

 Meandrina + Manicina {pars) Dana, Zooph. Expl. Exp., 1846. 

 Mceandrina + Cceloria + Manicina + Diploria + Leptoria {pars) Edw. and Haime, 



Hist. Nat. Corall., ii, pp. 388-401, 1857. 

 Platygyra + Diploria + Manicina Vanglian, Fossil Corals of Curacao, etc., 



Samml. Geol. Reichs-Mus. , Leiden, Ser. 2, ii, i, pp. 45, 48, 1901. 



A Study of large series of various species of the above so-called 

 genera, during many years, has convinced me that they should all be 

 reunited into one genus, which would thus correspond more nearly 

 with the genus Meandrina Lam. (1816) and to Meandrina of Dana 

 + Manicina, pars. 



If it be necessary to restrict Meandrina^ (Lam., 1801) to the type 

 nieandrites (L.)^pectinata Lam., as claimed by Vaughan and others^ 

 the next generic name, in order of publication, would be Mceandra 

 of Oken, 1815, in which the first species [areola^ Manicina areolata, 

 authors), as well as the second and fourth, belongs to this group. 

 Ehrenberg, also, definitely adopted this name nearly in the sense 

 used here. Vaughan arbitrarily chooses to assume that 31. mean- 

 di-ites should be considered the type of Mneandra, and therefore 

 places that name as a synonym of Meandrina. This is not logical 

 and is contrary to his method of reasoning in other similar cases 

 (e. g. Favites Link, on ■^. 22). 



* In establishing the genus Meandrina in 1801 (Syst. An., p. 372) Lamarck 

 named but one species, M. pectinafa=Madrepora meandrites L. ; Ellis and Sol., 

 which may properly be the type, though he added many other species in 1816. 

 M.-Edw. and Haime referred to these facts (Corall., ii. p. 389), but preferred to 

 take for the type M. Jilograna, on the ground that denticulated septa was given 

 by Lamarck (1801) as a character of the genus. 



It is certainly a legitimate question for doubt, whether the characters given to 

 a genus are not of more imjiortance than the particular species cited as an 

 example by the older writers, who did not usually give them as " types" in the 

 modern sense. 



