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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
great judgment, and most carefully placed in the clearest point of view. 
Here and there, indeed, we detect small errors, — for instance, in speaking of 
costume the author seems to misinterpret the significance of the two useless 
buttons on the hacks of our modern coats ; and in another place he repre- 
sents the French future tense of verbs as formed by adding the present tense 
of the verb avoir to the infinitive of the verb, so that je donnerai would 
signify, i I have to give ’ ! an absurdity which we are sorry to find in so 
good a book. The illustrations are good and tolerably numerous, especially 
in the natural-history chapters. 
MONTICULIPORA* 
A YEAR and a half ago we had occasion to notice an important work 
on the so-called Tabulate Corals, then lately published by Prof. H. 
Alleyne Nicholson. In this book Prof. Nicholson referred, in immediate 
connexion with the Chsetetidse, to a group of organisms forming the genus 
Monticulipora and some allied genera or sub-genera, and he has now pro- 
duced an equally elaborate treatise, which is devoted exclusively to those 
curious and problematical fossils. 
The genus Monticulipora was founded by D’Orbigny in 1850, for the 
reception of certain Palaeozoic corals, which he defined as having the cells 
close together, poriform, at the surface of a branched or incrusting whole 
covered with small conical projections; and it was from the presence of 
these little elevations or 1 monticules ’ that the name of the genus was 
derived. Other forms showing more or less agreement with the characters 
laid down by D’Orbigny were soon found in various parts of the world, or 
previously described species were referred to the new genus, whilst in 
some cases new genera were formed for the reception of new forms ; but 
the whole were still always considered to belong to the Corals, and in 
fact to the section Tabulata, after the establishment of that group by Milne 
Edwards and Haime. 
Of late years, as all palaeontologists know, the rights of the group of Tabulate 
corals to exist as a systematic entity has been frequently called in question, 
and we may hold that the coup-de-grace was given to it by Prof. Nicholson 
in the work already referred to ; but, as will indeed be seen even from our 
imperfect notice of that book, the business of negation was easier than tha 
of affirmation, and while it might without much difficulty be demonstrated 
that the fossil organisms in question do not form a systematic whole, it was 
by no means an easy task in all cases to decide where the dismembered 
parts should be placed. 
In his former book, Prof. Nicholson was inclined to regard Chcetetes 
and Monticulipora as Alcyonarian forms, notwithstanding the arguments 
put forward by Prof. Lindstrom and others in favour of their being placed 
* On the Structure and Affinities of the genus Monticulipora and its 
Sub-genera ; with Critical Descriptions of Illustrative Species. 8vo. Black- 
wood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1881. 
