( 401 ) 
XXXII. Description of a Fossil | Alcyonium, from the Chalk Strata 
near Lewes, in a Letter fo A. B. Lambert, Esq. F.R.S. V.P.L.S. 
By Mr. Gideon Mankell, F.L.S. 
Read June 1, 1814. 
Dear SiR, 
I nzc leave, with the utmost diffidence, to submit the following 
observations to the learned Society of which I have the honour of 
being a member, convinced that it will receive with indulgence 
any attempt to elucidate the natural history of secondary fossils. 
The Aleyonite which forms the subject of the present commu- 
nication is, I believe, peculiar to the upper or flinty chalk in the 
vicinity of Lewes; it never occurs in. any other stratum, and 
there is every reason to conclude that it obtains the same situation 
in the hills of Wiltshire. I am not aware of any author having 
noticed this interesting fossil, unless the funnel-shaped fossils 
found by M. Guettard at Verest and' Touraine, and those de- 
scribed in the second volume of Mr. Parkinson's admirable work 
on * Organic Remains," are of this species. The specimens which 
occur at Lewes, though. generally considered as Alcyonia, do 
not entirely conform to the eharacter of that genus as given by 
-= modern writers; yet, being evidently very nearly allied to it, 
the Society will, perhaps, permit me to extend the character, 
so as to allow these fossils a temporary admission, till future dis- 
coveries shall point out more precisely their situation in the scale 
of animated nature. 
ALCYONIUM: 
