INDIAN AND PERSIAN GONIOPOI.'.i;. 117 



71, Goniopora Persia (4)2. 



[Bajazid, Araxes Valley (" Supra-nummulitic Limestone" = Miocene), coll. Dr. Abich.] 



Ltiharaa ramosa, Abich (? turn Milne-Edwards and Haime), Mem. Ac. Imp. Sci. St. Petersburg, ser. vi. 

 vol. ix. i. (1859) p. 102 (42) Taf. ix. figs. 12, a, b, c, d, e. 



Description. — Corallum forms irregular cylindrical stems, 1-1*5 cm. thick, growing up 

 side by side, crowded, and often fusing, owing to lobate lateral outgrowths. The surface i« 

 humpy, and often covered with pellicular epitheca. 



The calicles (under the epitheca, and that is laterally) are rounded, shallow, and about 

 1*5 mm. in diameter. The radial symmetry can only be recognised in the arrangement of 

 the granules. Walls thick, with few perforations. If we accept Dr. Abich's interpretation of 

 the section (I. c. fig. 12), 16 complete septa early form a nearly solid columellar tangle, the 

 septa and the coils of the tangle being very thick, so that the interseptal loculi and the 

 meshes of the columella are much reduced. But it is very doubtful whether these thick 

 white septa are not really filliug-in matter, and the dark lines the true skeleton, as I discovered 

 to be the case in G. Persia 4- 



The " Zitharwa ramosa " of Milne-Edwards occurs at Dax in France, and, as Dr. Abich 

 himself points out, has calicles 2-3 mm. in diameter. Both this and the last four afford 

 instances of the way names are used, even by naturalists of eminence, mainly from a natural 

 reluctance to " establish new species " without a special study of all the related forms. 



A vertical section figured by Dr. Abich shows the trabecule bending outwards from the 

 axis of the rapidly rising stock. A very similar section is seen in one of the specimens of 

 G. Persia 4- 



The cross section of this latter coral, further, has a very similar appearance to Dr. Abich's 

 fig. 12 d, and almost convinces me that he has misinterpreted the fossil, for in G. Persia 4 the 

 thin dark lines are certainly the coral. 



72. Goniopora Persia (4) 3. (PI. XIV. fig. 5.) 



[Guverchin Kala,* on the N.W. shore of Lake Urmi (Miocene), coll. Loftus ; Brit. Mus.] 



Description. — Corallum massive, nodular. The living layer apparently broken up into 

 detached portions, which crept over previous growths, with distinct raised edges, each colony 

 making a mound, hence the nodulation of the mass. On the other hand, the sections show 

 that the growth was continuous ; the nodulation and division of the living layer may have been 



* For a description of the locality and a section of the rock "Guverchin Kala," see Loftus, 

 Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc, Ixi. (1855) p. 305. There is no indication as to which of the strata 

 described these and the following fossils were found in, Nos. 2 or 6. A number of minute " flesh- 

 coloured " particles in the matrix of G. Persia 4 suggest the more recent of the two 







