GRAPTOLITES OF NEW YORK, l'ART 2 



Fig. 122 Corynoides calicu- 

 laris Nicholson. Copies of original 



Under the impression that the organism could have only consisted of a 

 single polypite, Nicholson considered it as analogous to the Corynidae, 

 regarding it as " especially resembling such forms as Corymorpha, in which 

 there is but a single polypite," and named the genus accordingly, but refrain- 

 ing from an absolute reference to the Corynidae because Corynoides in his 

 opinion existed as "an independent or free-floating organism."' 



This diagnosis of Corynoides has been maintained by Nicholson in his 

 Monograph of the British Graptolitcs, and in 1874 

 [Ouar. Jour. 1875, 3 T :( ^33] Hopkinson and Lap- 

 worth made the genus the representative of a 

 separate family Corynograptidae and of a section 

 (Corynoidea) of the Rhabdophora, giving it equal 

 rank with the Graptoloidea and Retioloidea ; and 

 at the same time changing the name into Coryno- 

 graptus for the sake of uniformity. Lapworth did 

 not, in later publications, maintain this new name h & UTes 



to which the same criticisms and arguments apply that have been made 

 in regard to the changing of Dictyonema into Dictyograptus, proposed at 

 the same time and place. 



A second species, C. gracilis, was described in 1872 by Hopkin- 

 son. His conception of this species was that it probably consisted of but 

 one theca with about five terminal teeth, which are the terminations of 

 fibres that may have supported the less rigid and more membranous portion 

 of the polypary, as the frame of an umbrella supports its cover. 



Lapworth figured in 1876 in the Catalogue of the Western Scottish 

 Fossils a third species, C. curt us which was described in the following 

 year. 



In Nicholson and Lydekker's Manual of Palaeontology we find Cory- 

 noides a<jfain noticed as "a singular cretins, which differs from all the orcli- 



'A Diplograptus of the subgenus Cephalograptus, D. t u b u 1 a r i f o r m i s is 

 described by the same author as apparently constituting a transition form between 

 Corynoides and the true Graptolites. 



