5^0 Keport of the State Geologist. 



cuLipOKiD^. *'The family which has given us the greatest 

 trouble in working out its aflanities and its internal structure is 

 MoNTiouLiPOEiD^, uot oulj bccausc there had to be taken into 

 consideration two opposite opinions of long standing, one sup- 

 ported by Ltndsteoai and Rominger, regarding these fossils as 

 Br} ozoa, and another, supported strongly by Nicholson, taking 

 them to be corals, but also, because the family as circumscribed 

 by l^icHOLSON could not be retained as made to include forms of 

 Alcyonabia as well as those belonging to Hbxacoballa. 



" The first point, therefore, is to show the affinity of the Monti- 

 cuLiPORiD^ to the corals, in opposition to the view which con- 

 siders them as Bryozoa. In our endeavors to decide this question, 

 great difficulties were encountered on account of the fact that no 

 decisive characters have so far been made out, by which the 

 stony abodes of certain corals, and those of the Bryozoa cyclo 

 stomata could be distinguished. Both consist of minute cells, 

 more or less tubular, often with horizontal partitions or tabulae ; 

 and even organs comparable externally to radial septa are not 

 entirely absent in some Bryozoa ; from all of which it appears 

 that in fossil forms neither the general habitus of the colonies 

 nor the internal character of the single cells can be made use of 

 for the distinction of the Monticulipokid^ and the Bryozoa. Yet 

 after careful study we detected certain distinctive characters in 

 the mode of propagation which are so radically different as to 

 affect the shape and structure of the colonies ; the structure of 

 the walls of the cells is also different in the Monticuliporid^ 

 and in the Bryozoa. 



'' In all these considerations we must exclude, however, the 

 genus Heteropora. In its structure it can not be denied this 

 genus exhibits a certain affinity to the Monticuliporidje, but 

 there are also so many discrepancies that its real relations must 

 probably be looked for in other quarters. 



" If we turn now to the modes of propagation occurring in 

 different groups of animals, we find that in Bryozoa there is only 

 one such mode observable and that is gemmation. In the corals^ 

 on the contrary, two such modes have long since been made 

 known — fissiparity and gemmation. Whilst, however, gemma- 



