615 



Öfversigt af Kougl. Votenskaps-xVkademieiis Körhandlingur 1895. N:o 9. 



Stockholm. 



On the »Corallia baltica» of Linn^us 



by 



G. Lindström. 



(Comniunicated November 13th 1895.) 



Auiongst the paleeontological treasures which lie hoarded up 

 in the Silurian strata of Gotland the Corals are the most pro- 

 minent in regard to their frequency, their beauty and their great 

 size, in which they often surpass the other fossils. Long be- 

 töre these attracted any notice corals found a place in the collec- 

 tions and museums which in our northern countries began to be 

 formed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus 

 OlaüS Wormius mentions them in his »Museum Wormianum», ^) 

 Stob^us-) and especially Magnus von Bromell^) made large 

 collections of them and published descriptive works. 



A closer consideration of the labours of these writers must, 

 however, now be left out of the question, as it is more im- 

 portant to try to settle which, according to our present knowledge, 

 were the fossil corals described by Linn^us, the more so as 

 many of his very clearly defined species have been rejected or 

 not rightly understood by most of the recent authors on fossil 

 corals. 



') Printed Amstelodami 1655 in folio; he says, p. 81 »Fungites seu fungos 

 imitantes lapides ex Gotlandia habeo», clearly Ptychophyllum patellatum. 



^) Opuscula in quibus petrefactorum .... historia ilhistratur. Dantisci 1753. 



^) »Lithographiae Suecaaae specimen» in thu Acta Literaria Sueciae 1727 — 28, 

 especially Cap. II de Coralliis fossilibus, p. 363 in the vol. II of the Acta. 

 Öfvers. af K. Vet.-Akad. Förh. 1895. Arg. 52. N:o 9. 2 



