On the Genus Monticulipora. 



33 



bers; but it is found also in the lower part of the Utica Slate, where it 

 ends. It is one mass of small, angular cells, arranged side by side. 

 It is equally abundant at Frankfort, Kentucky, where it received the 

 name of Trianisites cliffordi? Since that time it has been figured 

 again and again in State surveys and geological publications, and 

 as repeatedl}" mentioned and described as a characteristic form of 

 the Trenton Group. In 1847, Prof. Hall figured it with transverse 

 and magnified views, and called the branching corals from the Trenton 

 Group Chetetes lycoperdon, var. ramosus. This variety, ramosus, he 

 found in the Hudson River Group, but he saj's (HalVs Pal.,\o\. i, p. 276) : 

 •'This coral acquires its full development in the shaly part of the Trenton 

 limestone, rarely appearing in hemispheric forms in the succeeding 

 shales. In the more calcareous part of the Hudson River Group it occurs 

 in ramose forms, similar to those already described, and assumes some 

 other features in its mode of growth not observed in the limestone." 

 So far as the literature of the subject goes, and my own acquaintance 

 extends, there is no American palaeontologist, and has been none since 

 1842, but who is or was familiar with the true type lycoperdon as it 

 characterizes the Trenton Group. Some have supposed that branch- 

 ing corals might be mere varieties of this species, and that therefore 

 the forms from the Hudson River Group might be classed with it, and 

 others have from time to time distinguished and characterized species 

 among the branching forms, but no one seems to have been ignorant 

 of the true type of lycoperdon. It has never been a doubtful form. 

 Indeed, there is no American coral where less doubt surrounds the 

 true type of the species. Neither Emmons nor Vanuxem claimed the 

 specific name of lycopodites, which is a barbarism, and, by the rules of 

 nomenclature, an} 7 one is permitted to spell the name correctly, as 

 Say evideuth' did, in the first instance, and it makes no difference as 

 to the validit}' of the name, lycoperdon, whether it is followed by Say, 

 as Hall did, in 1847, or by Emmons or Vanuxem, who illustrated and 

 defined it in 1842. It will, no doubt, be used as the specific name of 

 the puff-ball species by all educated palaeontologists, as long as the 

 binomial method of nomenclature shall continue to prevail. 



Notwithstanding these criticisms, which I have thought are properly 

 demanded, the book contains an amount of information that renders 

 it, on the whole, of some value to science. 



