253 



CHAPTER XII. 



AND MONTICULIPORID.E. 



USING the n'ame Chcetetidce in the wide and general sense in 

 which it has been usually employed, and temporarily including 

 under this title the genus Monticulipora and its allies, we 

 find that the group now under discussion comprises massive, 

 ramose, laminar, or encrusting corals composed of contiguous 

 tubular corallites, which are intersected by complete tabulae, 

 and are destitute of mural pores. There are either no struc- 

 tures of the nature of septa, or, at most, mere rudiments of 

 such. All the corallites may be like one another, or the 

 corallum may be composed of two distinct and differing sets 

 of tubes. 



The Chcetetidce were regarded by Milne -Edwards and 

 Haime as a " tribe " of the Favositidce, and the genera Chcetetes, 

 Fischer, Dania, E. and H., Stencpora, Lonsd., and Constellaria, 

 Dana, were regarded as constituting this division (Brit. Foss. 

 Cor. Introduction, p. Ixi, 1850). Monticulipora, D'Orb., was 

 originally included by Edwards and Haime under Chcetetes, 

 but they subsequently admitted its generic distinctness (Brit. 

 Foss. Cor., p. 264, Note, 1854). The genus Fistulipora, 

 M'Coy, on the other hand, was placed by the French observers 

 in the family of the Milleporidce, in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of Heliolites. In their great work, the ' Polypiers 

 Fossiles des Terrains Palaeozoiques,' Milne - Edwards and 

 Haime established the three additional genera Beaumontia, 

 Dekayia, and Labechia, which they placed in the Chcetetince i 



