WEST INDIAN GONIOPORA. 153 



This coral is closely allied to the forms of the same genus from Bracklesham Bay. The 

 section of a calicle is not very unlike that of specimen 30 (see opposite page), only it is smaller, 

 the septa are not so echinulate, and the wall-reticuluin is less flaky. Geol. Dept. 49641. 



Appendix to the English GoNiopoiiiE. 



Figures 15 and 15a on Plate XIV. refer to a specimen (Geol. Dept. R. 4821) which I 

 mistook for one of the Goniopores with circular calicles, looking as if neatly punctured into the 

 smooth convex surface of the corallum, each calicle having a rosette of six prominent pali- 

 bearing septa (cf. PI. I. fig. 2, PI. III. fig. 9, PL IV. fig. 8, etc.). But Mr. R. Bullen Newton 

 informs me that I have been accidentally misled as to the horizon and locality of the specimen, 

 and that it rightly belongs to the Albian beds of Haldon Hill in Devonshire, and that it is 

 probably more nearly related to the genus Haldonia of Duncan (Quart. Journ. Geo. Soc. 

 XXXV. (1879), p. 91, pi. 8, figs. 2 and 3). 



It certainly would be remarkable to find a cretaceous Goniopora showing a type of calicle- 

 structure which on every count must be regarded as highly specialised (cf. Introd. p. 19, and 

 p. 180 C.) and which is so far only known among recent forms. The decision rests .upon the 

 character of the walls ; if these are perforate, then structurally the specimen must be regarded 

 as a Goniopora whatever its horizon. Unfortunately the state of the preservation allows of no 

 final decision on this point. What I took to be the signs of perforations may well be, as 

 Mr. Newton thinks, accidental alterations due to the fossilisation. It would be unsafe, there- 

 fore, to make any use of this fossil in reference to the history of the genus. It will, for the 

 present, serve to call attention to this type of calicle structure in Goniopora, and be a lesson as 

 to the difficulty of unravelling coral genera, owing to the fact that corals built on essentially 

 different plans may come to imitate one another so closely that only the most minute 

 anatomical study can assign them their places in the system. 



Group XL— RUSSIA. 



143. Goniopora Crimea (i)l. 



[Biassula, near the river Katscha (Lower Cretaceous, Barremian) ; Museum of the Institute 



of Mines, St. Petersburg.] 



Litharcea taurica, Eichwald, Lethsea Rossica, vol. ii. (1868) p. 165, pi. xi. fig. la and 6. 



Description. — Corallum thick, explanate, slightly convex, attached to large stocks of 

 other genera. 



Calicles polygonal, 5 mm. in diameter, very shallow. The walls are thin and reticular, 

 without median thread, and (judging from the figure) consisting of a single row of nearly 

 rectangular meshes. Septa in three cycles with traces of a fourth ; the primaries and secondaries 



x 



