66 Mr. H. J. Carter on the close Rehxtionship of 



mens from a limestone deposit on the eastern shore of the 

 Adriatic, near Trieste, which deposit he has called "Liburnische 

 Stufe," and considers intermediate between the Upper Creta- 

 ceous and Lower Eocene strata. Possessing this thin slice 

 only, I, of course, am not able to say if it be the same species 

 as that from the Lower Chalk of Dover, although the con- 

 tour of the section, its size, colour, composition, and struc- 

 ture, so far as the tissue-fibre goes, appear to be identical ; 

 but the " thin slice " presents no trace of radiating tubes, 

 although the tissue-fibre is more neatly defined, and there are 

 evident, although indistinct, lines of concentricity which do 

 not appear in the British-Museum specimen. Then Mr. 

 Brady also states that his example cannot claim to be a type 

 specimen ; and therefore, for the present, the question must 

 thus remain undecided. 



However, this does not interfere with the facts which the 

 English fossil supplies ; and the first is the presence of the 

 "branched, tortuous, dendriform fibre in prominent relief" on 

 the surface, which is precisely like that which the coenosarcal 

 stolon-tubulation on the surface of a specimen of Hydractinia 

 ecMnata^ picked up on the beach here (Pl.VIIl. fig. 3), would 

 represent if fossilized, even to the annulation, which, although 

 ill-defined, also appears to be present in one portion of the 

 structure ; next to this, the reticulated anatomosing tissue- 

 fibre, without incrustation, of which the fossil is composed, 

 which, with the radiating tubes, at once establishes a close re- 

 semblance between Bradya tergestina, Parheriaj and Stroma- 

 topora ; lastly, the stelliform branched systems of grooves 

 respectively (which were probably tubular in the recent 

 organism), on the summit of the eminences, are identical with 

 those seen on the surface and summits of the bosses in Stro- 

 itnatopora. 



I had hoped to find the latter on the summits of the bosses 

 respectively in Pctrkeria nodosa] but Mr. E. T. Newton, 

 who kindly undertook to examine the specimen at the Museum 

 of the Royal School of Mines, as well as the still better one at 

 the British Museum, states in his letter of the 2nd of October 

 last, " I cannot see any trace " of them ; while he gives a 

 rough sketch from memory of a specimen in the Cambridge 

 Museum with much larger bosses, indeed not altogether un- 

 like in shape, but much larger than those of Bradya tergestina, 

 stating, at the same time, that he had seen a specimen in the 

 British Museum on which " there are certain irregular promi- 

 nences; and from these vein -like markings are seen spreading 

 out somewhat as in Stromatojyora^ This was the specimen 

 above described, which Mr. H. Woodward, having since had 



