198 CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADIAN PALEONTOLOGY. 



solitary six rayed spicule figured, which is somewhat doubtfully refer- 

 red to this species. It appears to be about one third smaller than the 

 figured spicules of the typical A. Hamiltonensis, the former being about 

 two millimetres in its maximum diameter and the latter about three in 

 theirs. Isolated spicules preciselj^ similar to that of the ILa,y Eiver 

 Astrceospongia are found in the Hamilton Formation at Thetford and at 

 Bartlett's Mills, near Arkona, Ontario. 



ANTHOZOA. 

 ALCYONARIA. 



AULOPORA SERPENS, GoldfuSS. 



Tubiporihs serpens .' Schlotheim. 1820. Petrefact., pt. 1, p. 367. 

 Aulopora serpens, Goldfuss. 1826. * Petref. Germ., vol. I, p. 82, tab. xxxiii, 

 flg. 2. 

 " " Rominger. 1876. Geol. Surv. Mich., Foss. Corals, p. 86, pi. 



xxxiii, fig. 2. 

 Walcott. 1884. Paltoont. P^ureka distr. Nevada, p. 103. 



Hay River, forty miles above its mouth, R. G. McConnell, ]887: one 

 specimen parasitic upon Atrypa reticularis. 



This little coral seems to be in no i-e.spects dissimilar to the fossils 

 from the Hamilton Formation of Michigan and from the Lower Devo- 

 nian of Gray's Canon in the Buieka district of Nevada, which have 

 been referred to A. serpens by Di-. Eominger and Mr. Walcott. It is, 

 however, not yet certain that the specimens from these three localities 

 are precisely identical with the species described by Schlotheim and 

 Goldfuss. 



The systematic position of the genus Aulopora has long been doubt- 

 ful and is still far from settled. In their monograph of the British 

 Fossil Corals (1850-54), Edwards and Haime refer it to the Alcyonaria, 

 but in their subsequently published " Polypiers Fossiles des Terrains 

 Palffiozoiques " they create foi- it the special order Zoantharia Tubulosa, 

 composed of the single family Auloporidos, and place both between their 

 Tahulata and Bugosa. Nicholson, in the last edition of his Manual of 

 Paleontology (1889) refers Aulopora to the Alcyonaria, but Ferdinand 

 Eeemer, in the Lethea Geognostica (1876) places it at the end of the 



* Rojmer (Lothea Oeognost., 1, S21) gives the date of this species as 1826, and Edwards and 

 Haime (Polyp- foes., p. 312) as 1829. The first volume of the Petref. Germanise bears date 

 1826-33. 



