SOME NEOCENE CORALS OF THE UNITED STATES. 



By Henry Stewart Gane, Ph. D., 



Fellow in Geology, Johns Hopkins University, 1894-95. 



INTRODUCTION. 



At the suggestion of Prof. William B. Clark, of the Johns Hopkins 

 University, the writer was encouraged to undertake the study and sys- 

 tematic description of the Neocene corals of the United States. Further- 

 more, the present paper has been constructed both as to method of 

 treatment and arrangement of subject-matter upon the general plan of 

 Professor Clark's bulletin on the Mesozoic Echinodermata of this 

 country. 



No attempt had been made hitherto to treat this subject from the 

 present standpoint, the few corals previously described being offered to 

 science either as possessing only zoological interest, or else to complete 

 a local fauna. 



The first mention of a Neocene coral from this country is found in the 

 Petrefacta (Grermanise of Goldfuss (1829), where Madrepora palmata is 

 both described and figured. During the thirty years following this 

 first description there were at irregular intervals a number of scat- 

 tered contributions to the subject. The more important were those of 

 T. A. Conrad, W. Lonsdale from the collections made by Sir Charles 

 Lyell, and Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime. More recently there have 

 been but two papers worthy of notice, one in 1887 by Prof. P. M. 

 Duncan on the genus Septastrcea d'Orbigny, from the Miocene of 

 Maryland, and one in 1888 by Dr. G. J. Hinde as a criticism of Pro- 

 fessor Duncan's article. It is of interest to note that the researches of 

 Dr. Hinde on this American species are almost unprecedented, no sim- 

 ilar coral having been treated in so exhaustive a manner. In consid- 

 ering all the referehees we notice the somewhat remarkable fact that 

 by far the most important writings have appeared both in foreign 

 journals and from the i)ens of foreign paleontologists. 



The material treated has been loaned to the writer from the col- 

 lections of the U. S. National Museum, Wagner Free Institute of 



Ppoceedinqs of U. S. National Museum, Vol. XXII— No. 1193. 



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