KARAKORAM STONES, OR SYRINGOSPHiERID,E. 3 



The late distinguished Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of India had traced these 

 remarkable spheroids to their time and place in the succession of rocks, and he expressed an 

 opinion regarding their zoological position. They were found in shales beneath limestones 

 which were certainly lower than the Lias, and which were probably triassic in age. The term 

 "coral" was singularly justified, for some of the superficial markings on the stones resemble, 

 in their radiate appearance and regularity, the casts of the calices of minute Madreporaria of 

 the genera Astroccenia and Styloccenia. But it is only necessary to remark that Stoliczka's 

 great knowledge of the Anthozoa would have led him to the expression of a different opinion 

 had his specimens been prepared for microscopic examination. 



The so-called Karakoram stones collected during the second Yarkand Expedition by my 

 lamented friend were placed in my hands by Mr. W. T. Blanford in 1878. 



The specimens are numerous and in very perfect condition ; the weathering to which 

 some have been subjected rendering the outside details all the more visible. Their surfaces 

 are free from other fossils, and a broken serpula tube is the only one to be recognised. 



Fossilization has occurred by the introduction of calcite, and this is usually somewhat 

 dark in colour, but is transparent in thin sections. The original structure of the body now 

 consist of carbonate of lime of a different and lighter colour to the infiltrated calcite, and it 

 appears that on the outside of the fossils the original structure has usually disappeared and 

 the intermediate or infiltrated mineral has lasted. 



Carefully made radial and tangential sections of the fossils, assisted by biting out with 

 dilute acids, and the use of low and high powers of the microscope, assisted by the polarising 

 apparatus, rendered their remarkable construction evident, and also that it was necessary to 

 include all the Karakoram stones in a new order of Rhizopoda called the Syringosphceridte. 

 A notice of this new order was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 

 for October 1878, Ser. 5, Vol. II, page 297. 



II. THE GENERAL MORPHOLOGY OF THE POSSILS, THEIR HISTOLOGY, AND THEIR, POSITION 



IN THE CLASSIFICATORY SCALE. 



The Karakoram stones are either nearly perfectly spherical, or more or less spheroidal 

 or ellipsoidal in shape. They may be of small size, and some are more than three inches in 

 their greatest diameter ; but they are always symmetrical, and there is no trace of a stalk or 

 of any former attachment by the surface to other bodies. Some forms are nearly smooth, 

 others are minutely granular, each granule having a definite construction, and the most 

 numerous types have tubercules, wart-like growths, and large eminences crowded, more or 

 less, with papillae and little warts upon them. There is one group of forms with a very 

 verrucose surface, and, on the other hand, another type is covered with a finely granulate 

 surface : nevertheless this external structure does not interfere with the general curvature of 

 the mass, the tops of the highest and lowest eminences never exceeding their symmetrical 

 position. 



The more rugose and mammilated surfaces of the fossils have small circular or deformed 

 shallow pits scattered here and there ; they are very numerous in some of the types with 

 rounded surface tubercles, and are but scantily distributed in others, and whilst they crowd 

 the surface of one form with a granular surface, they do not exist on another. These pits 

 become elongate on the equatorial part of some of the spheroidal fossils, and are found on the 



