70 Scientific Intelligence. 
can novelties to the exclusion of well-recognized eta classifi- 
cations is neither right nor scientifically correct.” we to un- 
derstand from this that “ American novelties” are si valuable 
than French or English ones, providing they be equally true to na- 
excl Or, that an erroneous European classification is more valuable 
than an American one that is correct ? Certainly no one has con- 
tributed more, in the way of original investigations and discover- 
ies, to a true classification of the corals, than Professor Dana, in 
ad been written in Europe up to that time (1846), and in some 
respects, his classification was = more natural than that proposed 
afterwards by Edwards and Hai 
Unfortunately, oe that period tlie corals and polyps in European 
museums had not been described or figured by European writers 
in a manner scoutat enh to make their identification possible, 
or even, in many cases, to show paged generic and family relations. 
That Edwards aud Haime, having access to those collections, and, 
having the benefit of Dana’s great ik should have been able to 
make corrections and improvements was natural. Nor was it less 
the ils of these corals , be a make a few corrections and 
oe ert even in dds opemettion a the views of Sears European 
writers. But several European authors have also made numerous 
changes in che system of Edwards and Haime, and are likely to 
make many more. Certainly the time has not yet come when wé 
can consider the poets of corals permanently fixed, a 
more than that of other classes of ani imals. Whether the “novel- 
of my views, as adopted “ar ana. He cit ihe Ocul a tribe; 
which the writer has proposed to . as to include certain 
families referred by Edwards and Haime to the Astrea tribe, oF 
suborder, and as “the admission of Orbicella, jeliaah is really 
the old Astrea f Lamarck [a mistake,—not of 1801], and of 
tu 
them in different families.” As a matter of fact, the writer, in 
several papers, has placed these same corals in di ifferent Families, — 
but has aon these families, together with er Oculinide, Stylas— 
teridie ophoride, Pocilli iporidx, etc., into one higher oe . 
chien) peri Oculinacea, and this is the view that .Dan 
