112 BRITISH FOSSIL CORALS. 
Corallum fasciculate, forming a globose tuft, which in some specimens appears to be 
almost a foot high, but was only four or five inches in the largest specimens seen by us. 
Corallites very tall, straight or slightly bent, almost cylindrical or somewhat prismatical, 
dichotomising at long intervals, very closely set and spreading out like a sheaf laterally and 
upwards. ails presenting circular tumefactions more or less characterised, and annular 
expansions, which sometimes extend from one corallite to another by means of small conical 
processes, somewhat in the same manner as in Syrizgopora (figs. 1 and 1a); but these lateral 
buttresses are compact and not tubular, as in the latter corals. Costal strice delicate, of 
equal size, rather closely set, and but little prominent. Calices of various forms, sometimes 
almost circular, sometimes oval, almost triangular or subpolygonal (fig. le). Colwmella 
quite rudimentary. From sixteen to twenty septa, large or small alternately, and closely 
set ; the smaller ones bending towards the principal ones in a somewhat irregular manner ; 
septal systems not distinctly recognisable in the adult specimens. Diameter of the coral- 
lites and of their calice about two thirds of a line. 
This fossil is found near Bath. The specimens here described were communicated to 
us by Mr. Bowerbank and Mr. Pratt. William Smith, who first discovered the species, 
mentions its existence at Comb-Down, Broadfield Farm, and Westwood; Professor J. 
Phillips appears to have found it at Terrington, and Mr. Morris says that it has been met 
with at Farley Downs, Hampton Cliff, and Murrel, near Bradford. It is found also in 
France, at Langrune, Luc, and Ranville, near Caen, and according to M. Michelin, at 
Billy, near Chanceaux, Departement de la Cote d’Or. 
In general this coral is met with in a state so modified by the process of fossilisation, 
that it is very difficult to recognise its real zoological affinities. Lamouroux, who described 
it as the type of his genus Lwnomia, was only acquainted with specimens in which extra- 
neous matter had been first deposited around and between the corallites, so as to form a 
cast, and in which the corallites themselves had been afterwards completely destroyed and 
replaced by a distinct stony deposit, so that the original structure had completely disap- 
peared. The appearance thus produced naturally induced Lamouroux to suppose that this 
coral was nearly allied to Zwdipora, and Blainville considered it as bemg the cast of a 
Favosites. But M. Michelin, having found some specimens in which the septa had been 
partially preserved, recognised their affinity to Schweigger’s Lithodendron. In our 
Monograph of the Astreide, and in the introduction to this work, the genus Punomia was, 
however, still admitted on account of a peculiar disposition of the epitheca, which appeared 
in some casts to distinguish it from Calamophyllia. But the British specimens communicated 
to us by Mr. Pratt, and some finely preserved specimens from Normandy, which we have 
seen in M. D’Orbigny’s collection, prove that no sufficient grounds for a distinction of 
that kind do in reality exist, and that the Lwxomia of Lamouroux must no longer be 
separated from Calamophylla. 
C. radiata is the smallest species known, and it differs also from the other species of the 
same genus by the low number of its septa. 
