136 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1336 



tional Museum through the great kindness of 

 Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, is thoroughly repre- 

 sentative for the whole western hemisphere 

 and includes many forms from all other parts 

 of the world, Africa, Europe, temperate Asia, 

 the East Indies and Australia being well 

 represented. Southern Asia is the only 

 region from which there is but little material. 

 Clear presentation of the taxonomic condi- 

 tions shown in the rather large amount of 

 data necessitates a more elaborate classifica- 

 tion of the Opalinidse than that generally in 

 use. In the year 1918 I published a classifi- 

 cation of the Opalinidse. The completed re- 

 view of all the material shows that this classi- 

 fication, 'if elaborated somewhat will be a 

 clearer expression of the real facts. I there- 

 fore now projwse the following classification: 



Oiliata 

 Protoeiliata 

 Opalinidse 



Protoopalininse 

 Frotoopalina 

 Zelleriella, new genus 

 OpalininEe 



Cepedea, new genus 



Opalince angustcB (oocidentales) 

 Opalinw latw (orientales) 

 Euciliata 



The Opalinidse are placed as an appendage 

 of the Ciliata, being separated from the other 

 Ciliata by the fact that they have not devel- 

 oped macronuelei and micronuclei, and by 

 some features of their life history. They 

 show, both in their structure and possibly in 

 their life history, decided indication of rela- 

 tionship to the Trichonymphidse which are 

 usually regarded as an appendage of the 

 Flagellata. 



Erom the Opalinidse I exclude all the 

 genera of Ciliata astomata, which have 

 nuclei of two sorts, leaving, only those forms 

 which, with the exception of my own recent 

 usage, have been included in the genus 

 Opalina. The Opalinids include both binu- 

 cleated and multinucleated species and these 

 should be assigned to distinct subfamilies. 



The Protoopalininsa include the genera Pro- 

 toopalina (cylindrical binucleated forms) and 



Zelleriella^ (flattened binucleated forms). 

 The Opalininse also include two genera, 

 Cepedea^ (cylindrical multinucleated species) 

 and Opalina (flattened multinucleated spe- 

 cies). The latter genus includes two groups 

 of species — the western hemisphere forms, 

 which are for the most part narrow, especially 

 posteriorly, and the eastern hemisphere spe- 

 cies, all of which are broad. All the other 

 Ciliata may be classed as Euciliata in dis- 

 tinction from the Protoeiliata which include 

 only the Opalinidse. 



There are two species which do not ac- 

 curately fit into this classification as defined. 

 They are Frotoopalina quadrinucleata from 

 Rana macrodon of Java and Frotoopalina 

 axonucleata from Bufo hufo asiaticus of 

 eastern Asia. These species will be described 

 in a paper soon to go to press. They are 

 mentioned here merely because the former 

 usually has four nuclei and the latter usually 

 shows six to twelve nuclei. They are trans- 

 itional forms between the genera Frotoopalina 

 and Cepedea, but are classed with the former 

 genus because of the histological character of 

 their nuclei which resembles that of the 

 Frotoopalina nucleus. 



Matnard M. Metcalf 



The Oechard Laboratory, 

 Obeelin, Ohio, 

 May 20, 1920 



THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



The thirtieth annual meeting of the Ohio Acad- 

 emy of Science was held at the Ohio State Univer- 

 sity, Columbus, May 14 and 15, 1920, under the 

 presidency of Professor P. C. Blake. Sixty-nine 

 members were registered as present; thirty new 

 members were elected. 



The executive committee reported the comple- 

 tion of the afSliation of the academy with the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Sci- 

 ence in accordance with the plan adopted by the 

 association at the Christmas meeting. 



1 Named for Ernest Zeller who in the year 1877 

 published a fine paper upon the European species 

 of the family. 



2 Named for Casaimer Cepede whose studies upon 

 Ciliata astomata clearly showed that the Opali- 

 nidse are to be regarded as quite distinct from the 

 other ast'omatous forms. 



