118 REPORT 1871. 



vast accumulations of details to be worked out without the existence of a 

 satisfactory classification, and, in fact, the whole subject of the Palaeozoic 

 Madreporaria is in too transitional a state for an exhaustive report to be made 

 upon them. 



In presenting this Report, therefore, I hope the Association will consider 

 that I have not yet completed my task, and that it will allow me to continue 

 my work and to present other reports when occasion offers. No fxirther 

 grant will be required, as the future reports will deal more with the results 

 of other labourers than with my own. 



The present Report is divided into four parts, 



I. The consideration of the alliances of the Neozoic and the Palaeozoic 

 Coral-faunas. 



II. The classification of the Perforata. 



III. The classification of the Tabulata. 



IV. The Eugosa. 



In order to avoid useless repetition of well-known facts, I have referred 

 to them by giving their bibliography, except when they are contained in 

 inaccessible works. 



I. The Palaeozoic corals of Great Britain have been the subject of many 

 admirable works ; they have been largely treated of in the ' Monograph of 

 the British Fossil Corals' (Palaeontographical Society) by MM. Milne-Edwards 

 and Jules Haime, and by M'Coy in Sedgwick's great work. Phillips, 

 Lonsdale, King, Sam. "Woodward, Parkinson, Martin, Fleming, Portlock, 

 Sowerby, and Pennant have described species in their well-known works, 

 and Kent, James Thomson, and I have contributed some information on 

 the subject of the Scottish corals. But, with the exception of the labours of 

 the last three persons, the literature of the Palaeozoic Corals will be found very 

 accessible in the monograph already noticed ; any omissions, and a con- 

 siderable number of new species will be published in my Supplement to that 

 monograph, which I trust will appear year after year, especially as the 

 Supplement to the Mesozoic Corals is now complete (Palasoutographical 

 Society). 



The vertical range and the horizontal distribution of the species of corals 

 have been worked out by llobert Etheridge, F.E.S., in a work which is now 

 in course of publication (Cat. of Brit. Fossils). 



MM. Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime classified the British Palaeozoic 

 Corals amougst the sections Aporosa, Tabulata, Tubulosa, and Rugosa. The 

 great section Perforata is not represented in the British strata, but it is in 

 the equivalent American beds. 



The only representative of the Aporosa in their classification was one of 

 the Fungidoe, Palceocyclus being the genus. It is a SUurian form, and no 

 others of the family have been discovered in the other Palaeozoic rocks. The 

 genus has been the subject of a memoir in the Philosophical Transactions, 

 1867, where its rugose affinities are pointed out, and its cyathophyUoid na- 

 ture also. But the Aporosa are nevertheless represented in the Devonian and 

 Carboniferous rocks by the genera Battersby'm and Heterophyllia (Phil. 

 Trans. 1867). 



The alliances of these forms and of some of the Rugosa with the Jurassic 

 Coral-fauna have been noticed in my Supplement to the Brit. Foss. Corals 

 (Pal. Soc), part "Liassic," and in the Essay in the Phil. Trans, of 1867*. 



* The PALASTRiEACE^. Genera, £aiiershi/ia and Heterophyllia (Phil. Trans. 1867, p. 643 

 et seq., P. M. Duncan). — The so-called coenenchyma of Batter&hyia incsgualis, Ed. & H., 

 is like that of Baiter &hyia grandis, nobis, and B. gemmans, nobi?, It is really nothing 



