278 FOSSIL CORAL KEEP. [CHAP. XXXV. 



the Fenestella, and that elegant and well-known 

 European species of fossil, called &quot; the chain coral,&quot; 

 Catenipora cscharoides, with a, profusion of others, 

 which it would be tedious to all but the geologist to 

 enumerate. These coralline forms were mingled 

 with the joints, stems, and occasionally the heads, of 

 lily encrinites. Although hundreds of fine speci 

 mens have been detached from these rocks, to enrich 

 the museums of Europe and America, another crop is 

 constantly working its way out, under the action of the 

 stream, and of the sun and rain, in the warm season 

 when the channel is laid dry. The waters arc now 

 twenty feet above their lowest, and more than forty 

 feet below their highest level, so that large spaces of 

 bare rock are exposed to view. 



On one of the window-sills of Dr. Clapp s library 

 was displayed a group of these ancient corals, and, in 

 the other window, a set of recent corals from the 

 West Indian seas, of the genera Meandrina, Astrea, 

 Madrepora, and others ; some of them as heavy and 

 stony as those of older date, their pores, foramina, and 

 minute microscopic structure, not being more dis 

 tinctly preserved. No one but a zoologist would 

 have been able to guess which set were of modern, 

 and which of ancient origin. Yet so old are the 

 fossils, that they are referable to an era antecedent 

 to the Alleghanies, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, nay, 

 even to the time when by far the greater part of 

 the materials composing these mountain-chains were 

 slowly elaborated beneath the ocean. 



