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one spot to the other. But when it is considered what prodigious 

 masses are often formed by one species of coral, as in the recent co- 

 ral reefs in the South Sea, it will naturally occur to the mind of every 

 one, that, in cabinet specimens of fossils, which are the small fragments 

 of such masses mineralized, by far the greater number of specimens 

 may be expected to be found, not possessing this, the most charac- 

 teristic surface of the fossil. 



Instances of the vast quantities in which these corals were accumu- 

 lated, may be found in various marbles of which they form the basis, 

 and which are in masses sufficiently large, to allow of being cut into 

 slabs, of very considerable size, and to shew that they could not have 

 been brought by the waves to the places where they now are found. 

 Corals, in a mineralized state, yield also ample testimony of similar 

 species having congregated together in particular places. The Swe- 

 dish islands of Gothland and Oeland, as well as many other parts of 

 Sweden ; Worcestershire, Shropshire, Perthshire, Fifeshire, and many 

 other parts of Great Britain, possess considerable numbers of the sim- 

 ple turbinated madrepore *. In Wales are to be found considerable 

 masses of the remains of the curious madrepore, distinguished by 

 Lhwydd as Lithostrotion, sive Basaltes minimus striatus et stellatus. In 

 Westmoreland, Cumberland, the bishopric of Durham, and several 

 other parts of Great Britain, as well as of the Continent, are consider- 

 able accumulations of particular species of the aggregated and com- 

 pound madrepores. 



The softer zoophytes, such as the sponges, alcyonia, &c. evince still 

 stronger marks of their not having been conveyed by torrents to their 

 present residences. Many of these are of such a structure as certainly 

 could not have borne such a conveyance, with so little injury as is dis- 

 coverable in the several specimens, which have been examined in the 



* I lately received, from some unknown friend, two of these fossils, which were found 

 about thirty feet deep, in a mass of calcareous rock, at Lord Elgin's lime-works on the banks 

 of the Firth of Forth, in Fifeshire. 



VOL. II. O O 



