362 Dr. Chas. A. White—On a New Cretaceous Coral. 
nuted bones of larger fish do occur, but not on the exact horizon 
occupied by the small perfect fish—they are either just above or just 
below. The shrimps or prawns, which are found on precisely the 
same horizon as the perfect fish, are too in a very perfect state, and 
this is another fact in support of death by smothering. It seems 
doubtful whether such crustaceans as these—the largest I have 
measures about two and a half inches in length—were inhabitants 
of freshwater, but rather were drifted into the river or lake from the 
sea with the mud (and possibly with the small fish) and there 
entombed alive. Again, the texture of this fish clay is quite different 
from anything above or below it—indeed it is quite different from 
any of the Tertiary clay of the Island—being shaly and readily 
splitting into layers. It has also a well-defined transverse jointing, 
and this property is the cause of its easily dividing into irregular 
masses, in which state it is often rolled about by the waves and 
water-worn into rounded nodules. There is one very thin seam of 
Paludina and Melanopsis forming the top layer of the fish clay, as 
though after the fish clay had been deposited, the freshwater inhabi- 
tants had all been killed also by the influx of salt water or other 
agency; in the clay above no remains of mollusca are found at all. 
The whole scheme of life seems to have changed and the only organic 
remains are those of large fish and reptiles with the bones of a few 
small mammals. Above the horizon of these seams of fish bones we 
find nothing but grey and yellowish and red mottled unfossiliferous 
clays of varying hardness, which seem to point to water—probably 
of a brackish nature—but with an almost total absence of the usual _ 
freshwater life. 
Above these beds of clay comes the Bembridge Limestone showing 
the reverting to purely freshwater conditions, and the consequent 
recurrence of a freshwater fauna. 
The small fish and the shrimps were first discovered in the year 
1876, at Ryde House, and since that time I have, from the several 
localities, obtained about one hundred and fifty specimens of the 
former and about twelve specimens of the latter. 
[N.B.—Mr. E. T. Newton, F.G.8., of the Museum of Geology, 
Jermyn Street, is examining and naming the fish and Crustaceans 
mentioned in this paper, and his description of them will appear» in 
due course. | 
VIL—On Hinvrastrz4, 4 New Generic Form or Creracrous 
ASTREIDE. 
By Dr. Cuartes A. Wuire. 
Palontologist, U.S. Geological Survey. 
VHE little Coral here described was discovered in Kaufman 
County, Texas, in strata of the Ripley Group, by Dr. R. H. 
Loughridge, and presented by him to me, together with a few 
characteristic molluscan species of that group which he found asso- 
ciated with it. The Ripley Group is the uppermost division of the 
Cretaceous series in the States which border upon the Gulf of 
