SPONGES. 227 



sponge havS yet appeared in any American publication, I need 

 not apologize for the following brief statement of facts relating 

 to the genus and the several species known to me. 



The type of Hindia is the H. sphseroidalin described by Duncan 

 from Lower Helderberg specimens collected by Dr. G. J. Hinde, 

 in New Brunswick. The same were previously described by Dr. 

 Hinde as a tabulate coral and named SphaeroHtes nicbolsoni. 

 Of this paper nothing further than an abstract has ever been 

 published!. The same species had been described and figured 

 fifteen years before by Roemer from the Niagara of western Ten- 

 nessee, and identified by him with Goldfuss' Calamopora fibrosa*. 

 Again, it appears that Hall's description of his Astylospongia 

 inornata (16th Reg't Rep't, 1863) is founded upon specimens of 

 the same species from Lower Helderberg localities in New York. 



We have here then a fossil which has received no less than 

 four distinct specific names, and it is really a very difficult mat- 

 ter to decide which of them should be retained. Hinde and 

 Rauff use fibrosa, but as Roemer clearly regarded the Tennessee 

 specimens as specifically identical with Golfuss' Calamopora 

 fibrosa, I cannot see why he should be credited with a name of 

 which he is not the author. 



That he gave a sufficiently clear description of the Tennessee 

 specimens cannot be denied, but that point has no bearing 

 upon the real question, and it is of no consequence in the issue 

 whether we decide his figures and description to be inadequate, 

 or complete and sufficient for the identification of the species. 

 The course almost universally adopted in cases of this kind (to 

 my mind also the only rational and just one) is to give a new 

 name to the species which upon subsequent investigation proves 

 to have been erroneously identified with another. When they 

 belong to the same genus the giving of a new name is, of course im- 

 perative. Why should the proceedings be any different when it 

 happens, as in this case, that two species so confounded belong 

 to different genera? 



t Abstract of the Proc. Geol, Soc., No. 3.i5, 1875. 



* F. Roemer, "Silur. Fauna des WestL Tenn. p. 20, pi. 2, fig. 2, 1860. 



