278 THE MEDALS OF CREATION, Cuap. VII. 
sculpture and relief: the silicified or calcified corals appear- 
ing as perfect as if fresh from the sea. The mural rocks of 
coral limestone at Florence Court, the seat of the Earl of 
Enniskillen, are in many parts encrusted, as it were, with 
syringopora and other tubular corals, laid bare uninjured by 
the long and insensible effect of atmospheric erosion. A 
beautiful illustration of the old aphorism,— Aqua cavat 
lapidem non vi sed spe cadendo,’—is afforded by the 
splendid examples of cateniporee, fungiz, caryophillee, sculp- 
tured in alto-relievo on the face of the Silurian rocks over 
which dash the rapids at the Falls of the Ohio. 
The silicified zoophytes of the West Indies, and those 
from Ava and the Sub-Himalayas, form beautiful subjects 
for the microscope ; and chips, or sections, should be pre- 
pared in the manner recommended for fossil-wood in the 
same state of mineralization. 
BRITISH LOCALITIES. —The gravels and sands of the Crag 
afford most favourable sites for obtaining tertiary zoophytes. 
In the London clay at Bracklesham Bay, a species of 
Astrea (A. Websteri) is often met with attached to flints and 
pebbles. 
In the Greensand of Atherfield, in the Isle of Wight, an 
elegant coral (Astrea elegans) is by no means rare. 
The Greensand gravel-pits, near Faringdon, in Berkshire, 
abound, as already mentioned, (ante, p. 228,) in many kinds 
of sponges, and other porifera ; and the quarries of oolitic — 
limestone in the vicinity of that town, yield the usual corals — 
of the Jurassic formation in great profusion. I know of no 
locality richer in fossil zoophytes, than Faringdon.* 
The quarries of that division of the Oolite called Coral- 
rag (as in the north-west of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Glou- 
cestershire, &c.), afford the usual corals of the Oolite. 
The Oolite near Bath contains many species, and large 
masses of a minute coral (Hunomia radiata), are abundant. 
* See Excursion, Part IV. of this work. 
