36 



With respect to the madrepora fungites and madrepora patella, I do 

 not know of any corresponding fossil. To the madrepora cyatkus of 

 Ellis, the last of the single starred corals, which is also figured by 

 Count Marsilli* and Plancusj-, the fossil figured Plate IV. Fig. 5, bears 

 some resemblance ; but the agreement, however, is by no means suffi- 

 cient to authorise the belief that they are of the same species. In the 

 specimen figured by Ellis, the lamellae are forty in number, with as 

 many intermediate small ones ; but the lamellae in this fossil do not 

 come near to that number. This indeed is of itself a circumstance 

 which would be but of little weight, if their other characters closely 

 agreed. This corallite which is attached to its matrix, a piece of lime- 

 stone, composed of minute fragments of marine bodies, bears, in its 

 first joint, indeed, some resemblance to the m. cyathus; but it is, as 

 may be seen in the figure, a proliferous coral, which circumstance is 

 not referred to by either Plancus, Marsilli, or Ellis, in their accounts 

 of the recent coral. 



* Histoire Physique de la Mer. P. 153. 

 f Plane, de Conchis minus notis. P. 112. 



