148 MARINE BIOLOGY OF THE SUDANESE RED SEA, 
LEpRALIA, Johnston. 
In considering the position of this genus, now used provisionally, some of 
the remarks will apply to other genera, for many of our difficulties of classi- 
fication, both as regards species and genera, arise from ignoring the rule that 
a species or genus must have been SUFFICIENTLY DESCRIBED for it to be 
retained *, 
Lepralia, in the first edition of Johnston’s ‘ British Zoophytes,’ comprised 
7 species, which, according to present 1deas, would stand under 4, or, accordiny 
to some authors, 5 genera. In the second edition there are 37 species, now 
placed under 11 genera. Johnston, following the ideas of his time, based 
his genus on the species being incrusting, but now we know that this is an 
almost useless character in generic divisions. Hincks retained the name for 
a part of Johnston’s genus, though basing it upon zocecial characters. 
I quite agree with what various authors have said, that it would have been 
more satisfactory if Hineks had taken a new name, especially as Johnston’s 
first species, Hippothoa hyalina, did not fall into the new genus. We now 
recognise that from Hincks’s genera Lepralia, Schizoporella, and Cellepora 
some species will have to be removed and new groups formed ; yet the major 
part of Hincks’s Lepralia have the sides of the oral aperture more or less 
straight, or slightly curved with the proximal edge nearly straight, and with 
a lateral elongation at the side to which the muscles are attached. This has 
been called AHippoporina by Neviani ; but regarding this, further study is 
required, as the type of Aippoporina has an enlarged ovicelligerous zocecium, 
whereas some others have an external ovicell. 
As already stated, the first species, Hippothoa hyalina, did not fall into 
Hincks’s genus, as it belonged to a genus previously created by Lamouroux ; 
and it has been suggested that as the so-called type has gone, we must turn 
to the second species, Lepralia nitida, and take it as the type, and now 
replace the name Membraniporella by Lepralia ; but this is surely repeating 
Hincks’s mistake in a very exaggerated form, and causing confusion in 
several genera. 
How impossible it is to retain these old names at all cost is shown when we 
consider what the genus Cellularia was made to include, at least 8 genera of 
Cheilostomata and one of Cyclostomata. The first species is a Tubucellaria, 
but the genus Cellularia has been used in a variety of ways and its spelling 
altered. When we study the generic diagnosis of the older zoologists, sy 
even of careful zoologists like Pallas and Gray, we often find that absolutely 
* Ifa species is not recognisably described, then it is surely in the position of a manuscript 
species, and most workers coming upon a species only described in manuscript would adopt 
that name if there were no reason against so doing, but they are under no obligation to 
do so. 
