TEANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 619 



in the New Forest. Nearly all the species of the Oligocene coral fauna of that 

 "part of England, which were described in the publications of the Paljeontographi- 

 cal Society, are present in Mr. Reed's collection, and there is one form in addition 

 •which is very remarkable. 



Description of the corallum. 



The corallum is simple, cup-shaped, narrow, and rounded at the base, which 

 was free, and it is wide and open, and rather triangular at the calice, whose margins 

 are slightly inverted, except at the angles. 



An epitheca exists. The costse, where visible, are alternately large and small, 

 but always slender. There is much exotheca between the costa3. 



The calice is rather deep, and, judging from the structure of the base of the 

 corallum, the columella is small and tubercular. The septa are numerous, not 

 •exsert, slender, unequal, granular at the sides, and there are four cycles and part 

 of a fifth. 



The pali are distinct, bilobar, rounded or arched above, and as broad as the septal 

 ends, and granular. There are three crowns or circles of pali : one before the 

 primary, and others before the secondary and tertiary septa, and the septa of higher 

 orders have none ; the largest are in one circle and the smallest in another, 

 ■which is placed remote from the columellary space. The circle of pali before the 

 tertiary septa is intermediate in position between the others. The height of the 

 specimen is two centimetres, and the extreme breadth of the calice is 2'5 centi- 

 metres. 



Remarhs. — This is an aporose coral with the very rare combination of exotheca, 

 endotheca, and pali — a combination not hitherto observed in any British Island 

 -coral, which onlj' occurs in the coral fauna of the miocene of the Antilles, and 

 in the fauna of the deep sea of the Caribbean region. 



In investigating the corals from the miocene reefs of the West Indies, I de- 

 scribed a form which had the exothecal and endothecal structures and pali, and 

 placed it in a new genus, Asterosmilia ('Phil. Trans.' 1867). A year or two since 

 the late Count de Pourtales proved that the genus is extant, for he dredged up a 

 species and described it. 



But the species of the genus Asterosmilia had only pali before two orders of 

 septa. The presence of a third crown of pali is not, according to the analogy 

 of other genera, sufficient to remove the coral form, obtained at Brockenhurst, now 

 under consideration, from the genus Asterosmilia (mihi), and I therefore name the 

 species after the geologist to whom the museum at York is so greatly indebted — 

 Asterosmilia Reedi. 



The other species of coral which were associated with Asterosmilia Reedi in the 

 deposit at Brockenhurst belong to such very tropical genera as Madrepora and 

 SolenastriBa, and the members of the family Eupsamminse, whose modern represen- 

 tatives are both deep and shallow water forms. 



I would especially draw attention to the dimensions of a specimen oi Madrepora 

 Anfflica, nob., from Brockenhurst, for it is a large piece of a vigorously-grown per- 

 forate coral whose modern representatives onl}^ flourish in less than twenty 

 fathoms, and in a temperature of the sea higher than the mean of 72° F. Such a 

 Madrepora would now grow on a shallow bank or on the flank of a reef of coral. 

 The Brockenhurst specimens of Madrepora have been rolled and worn since death, 

 but not for any great distance, for the tissue of the coral was fragile in the extreme. 

 But the Asterosmilia and one specimen of an Eupsammine especiallj^ do not in- 

 dicate, from their state of preservation, that they have been rolled. They lived and 

 died not far from where they were found, and they may have lived at any depth 

 within or beyond twenty fathoms. Probably not far below the lowest spring- 

 tide level was their habitat, but it is possible that they may have had a deeper 

 one. 



In conclusion, it is necessary to remind those geologists who take an interest 

 in the physical geography of the period when nummulites were dying out, that 

 vast structures of Oligocene coral limestone were then forming in Northern Italy, 

 and the Austrian Alps, and that a great coral fauna prevailed west of the Indus. 



