106 REPORT — 1884. 



Family VII. CellariiDjE, Hincks. 



= Salicornariad-E, Busk ; and Reuss (part) ; ? Vincdlartam:, Busk ; 



CellarievE, Smitt. 



' Zocecia usually rhomboidal or hexangular, disposed in series round 

 an imaginary axis, so as to form cylindrical shoots. Zoarium erect, 

 calcareous, dichotomously branched.' 



In this diagnosis Mr. Hincks (op. cit. p. 103) says : ' I have not 

 included the jointed condition of the zoarium, as it must be accounted 

 more than doubtful whether this chai'acter is of sufficient importance to 

 warrant the relegation of such closely allied forms as Cellaria and 

 Vincularia, Defrance, to different family groups.' .... In a portion of 

 his work ('Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.' Feb. 1881, p. 155), 'Contributions 

 towards a General History of the Marine Polyzoa,' Mr. Hincks appro- 

 priates the genus Vincularia, Defrance, in part, as a genus of the family 

 Miceoporid^ — referred to further on — remarking onVincularia abyssicola, 

 Smitt, that the ' Zooecial character of this generic type' is 'essentially 

 Membraniporidan,' Acting upon this hint, and in accordance with the 

 general thoroughness of his work, Mr. Waters, in several of his suggested 

 changes of generic names, places many forms, which other authors 

 may regard as Vincularia, among the Membranipora, with the remark, 

 ' Vincularia forma.' As the name is likely to linger in our lists, but 

 without any genuine generic fixity — or, in other words, without generic 

 meaning in Mr. Hincks's classification — it may be as well to give as full 

 a history of the fossil group as possible under present circumstances. 



Defrance says (' Diet. d. Sc. Nat.' tome 58, p. 214) : 'We have given 

 the generic name of Vincularia to little quadrangular bodies which are 

 scarcely the size of a horse-hair, and which we find in a layer of the 

 Calcaire Grossier (= our Bracklesham beds) in the environs of Pai'is. 

 The}"- are two or three lines long, but they are not obtained perfect to 

 their terminations. . . . They have small grains on the four sides of the 

 little cells, the end one of which seems to be a sort of very small hole.' 

 Defrance gives several localities where the genus has been found, but one 

 particular form which he names V. fragilis is briefly described and 

 figured in the ' Vilnes du Mus.,' and the author infers that bis Vincularia 

 may have had some relationship to Flustra (? F. fistulosa, Linn., 'Fauna 

 Suec' ii. 2234), which Hincks gives as a synonym of Cellaria fistulosa, 

 Linnaeus. 



The next considerable addition to our knowledge of so-called Vincu- 

 laria — in this country, at least — is furnished by M'Coy (' Carb. Foss. of 

 Irel.' 1844). M'Coy says he accepts the genus of Defrance 'for those 

 species without lateral branches, and having more than two rows of 

 pores. I have not separated those specimens which have the pores all 

 round from those having them on one side only, as it seemed impossible 

 to separate generically such species as V. parallela (Flustra ? parallela, 

 Phillips) from V. raricosta, M'Coy.' Since M'Coy wrote the above the 

 species have again had to submit to changes, but both the species of 

 Vincularia given by him were transposed to D'Orbigny's genus Sulco- 

 retepora. 



M. d'Eichwald, in his ' Palasontology of Russia,' as well, I believe, 

 as in his other writings, adopts Defrance's genus Vincularia, and he gives 

 Glauconome, (part) Miinster, as a synonym. He describes several new 



