CLASSIFICATION OF ACTINIARIA 507 
differs from it in six others. It becomes evident that if 
we treat the sum-of-the-characters principle woodenly and 
mechanically here, we shall run Boloceroides into the 
Gonactiniidae or near them; but that will not represent 
the truth. It is a case for weighing individual points, and the 
best we can do for the genus is to place it near Myonanthus. 
Opinion will differ as to the relative value of the various 
points, but taking the general line of this paper, nos. viii 
and x will count more heavily for its relationship (not close) 
with Myonanthus than all its points of similarity to the 
Gonactiniids. For, after all, most of those points may be 
summed up as aspects of one fact, the generalized nature of 
the structure ; they are primitive features not shed, and these 
are more numerous than usual outside the Gonactiniidae. 
There are other forms with much clearer relationships which 
retain some of them, e.g. Bunodeopsis. 
This means the inclusion of Boloceroides cither in the 
same family as Myonanthus, or in a family to itself near 
the one containing the latter. Some of its differences from 
Myonanthus are of generic importance only (deciduous 
tentacles and lack of sphincter), and the question remains 
whether its ectodermal muscles and spirocysts in the body- 
wall, and its lack of basilar muscles and siphonoglyptes can 
separate it. Considering the fact that in other coherent 
families some at least of these things may be present or absent, 
it leaves the separation a matter, of doubt. In the present 
paper, therefore, Boloceroides will be included in the 
Myonanthidae (see pp. 524, 545, 564, &c.), with the reservation 
that probably there would be no harm in having a separate 
Boloceroididae (under Endomyaria and next to Myonanthidae) 
if preferred. The genus is evidently a transitional one. 
Any close relationship between Boloceroides and 
Bolocera seems a matter of doubt. Bolocera may well 
be a subsequent development of the same stock, which has 
attaimed larger size and, with this, numerous perfect mesen- 
teries, retiring to deeper water and losing the primitive condi- 
tion of body-wall, &c. This, however, is no argument for 
