236 THE MEDALS OF CREATION, Cnap. VII. 
central cavity, large oval spots, that are sections of a canal 
which traverses the entire mass, proceeding from the base 
to the summit, in a spiral coil around the central cavity. 
This structure was first detected by Mr. Cunnington. Mr. 
Woodward thinks this spiral tube is common to all the 
Choanites, and constitutes a generic character ; but so many 
examples have passed under my examination in which no 
traces of such a canal are perceptible, that it may be a 
specific difference. 
Among the chalk amorphozoa whose true affinities are — 
doubtful, is a small turbinated zoophyte, which I would 
place provisionally under this genus; it has a shallow central 
cavity, with a broad smooth margin, a reticulated external | 
surface, and radicle processes proceeding from the base; see 
Lign. 80, fig. 1. 
Paramoupra. Lign. 76.—This vernacular Irish term was — 
introduced by Dr. Buckland, in his account of some gigantic 
flints, thus popularly named, that occur in the chalk near 
Belfast, and also at Whitlingham, near Norwich. These 
fossils are of an irregular, oblong, spherical, or pyriform 
Shape, having a cavity above, which, in some specimens, 
extends to the bottom; indications of a pedicle are seen at 
the base ; in short, they closely resemble, upon a large scale, 
the funnel-shaped spongites, so frequent in the flints of the 
South Downs. Their appearance in situ, is represented 
Lign. 76, from Dr. Buckland’s illustrations: 6, is a single 
specimen, partly imbedded in the chalk, and ¢, d, two of the 
fossils in contact, the pedicle of the upper one lying in the — 
cavity of the lower. 
These bodies are from one to two or more feet in length, 
and from six inches to a foot in diameter. The appearance, 
both of the outer and inner surface, is that of the usual 
white calcareo-siliceous crust of spongitic chalk-flints. Upon 
breaking them, no decided structure is perceptible; but here 
and there, patches of red and blue chalcedony occur, as in 
