Editorial Ccmment. 325 
thrown out, leaving but twent3^-nine. Perhaps to console them 
he describes the siphuncle of an Endoceras upon which the 
septa have been tightly pressed (a common occurrence in soft 
shales) as a new species of Colpoccras. Such good species as 
Orthoceras fosteri S. A. Miller, O. ciiicinnatiense S. A. M,, 
and Cyrtoceras conoidale Wetherby, are consigned to the " limbo 
of the improbable," while such an evident synonym as O. hindei 
James,^ stands as a remarkable seniicyli ndr leal shell. One Ni- 
agara and several Trenton species are stated to occur at Cin- 
cinnati, while his descriptions are in most cases so vague and 
meagre that they are, to say the least, no improvement upon 
what we had before. To begin with, he complains of the 
fragmentary material upon which some of the species were 
founded by previous authors, and yet we find in the same num- 
ber that he describes under the name Go7}2phoceras poiversi^ a 
specimen so badly preserved that a generic reference must be 
purely conjectural. But it is remarkable in having both ends 
tapering and without septa! At the close of this paper he 
severely rebukes Prof. Alpheus Hyatt, whom we all supposed 
knew something of the cephalopoda, for framing a system of 
classification which is " simply appalling." 
Just one year later he publishes a descriptive catalogue of the 
"Protozoa of the Cincinnati group." In this paper Alicrospon- 
gia is placed as a synon^'m \\\\^<:^x Astylospongia., when he might 
easily have learned, that these two genera are really very dis- 
tinct, and belong to different orders. Thin sections (of which 
he says truly that they are essential to the study of pyl^eozoic 
sponges) show conclusively that Microspongia gregaria is 
congeneric with, even very closely related to, the common Ni- 
agara fossil Calainopora Jibrosa Roemer (non Goldfuss), which 
1 This name beyond question, was given to examples of &. transversiun 
S. A. M., which liad been partly bedded in soft shale. As is well known 
all cephalopodous shells occurring in soft shales have lost nearly all of 
their calcareous material, being generally represented by a delicate brown 
or black film, which weathers away as readily as the shale itself. O. 
hindei^ differing in no other respect than in the semicylindrical form from 
O. transversum, was produced by the weathering away of that portion of 
the shell which had extended up or down into the shale, the form and 
substance of the other half of the shell being well preserved in the lime- 
stone. 
