Ix PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



dispute might have been prevented, had the exact locahty, or if none was 

 knoM'n for certain, the fact of the want of knowledge, of the specimen 

 figured, been precisely stated. Forty-six corals occur in the British 

 Devonian strata, being rather less than one-third of all known Devo- 

 nian corals. Almost half of these are as yet peculiarly British, and 

 of the others only six (five of them being also continental in Europe) 

 occur on the other side of the Atlantic, a fact which, when we call to 

 mind the wide latitudinal range of the Anthozoa, has an important 

 significance in its bearing upon the determination of the geography 

 of the northern hemisphere during the Devonian epoch. Three only 

 of our Devonian corals are regarded by Milne-Edwards and Jules 

 Haime as identical with Silurian species, whilst they consider all the 

 others as peculiar to their epoch. All the species described belong 

 to the groups Zoantharia tabulate and Zoantharia rugosa, and the 

 most conspicuous and recent-looking corals of the Devonian reefs and 

 banks were members of the latter suborder, one of which there are no 

 living representatives. Hence all inductions drawn from the presence 

 and forms of these zoophytes respecting the prevalence of a warm or 

 tropical climate within our area during the epoch of their flourishing 

 must be set aside, since they have been founded on the mistaking of 

 analogies for affinities. If we accept the views promulgated con- 

 cerning the structure and classification of corals by Milne-Edwards 

 and Haime — numerous facts in whose support are accumulated in the 

 several parts of this monograph — the prevailing opinions concerning 

 the physical condition of the palaeozoic epochs must be very con- 

 siderably modified or subdued, and the separation of those vast and 

 infinitely remote periods from the stages in time that succeeded them 

 be made even more manifest than was indicated by the phsenomena 

 presented by other groups of palseozoic creatures. 



The appearance of the first part of the " Description of the Fossil 

 remains of IMollusca found in the Chalk of England," by our valued 

 Treasurer, Mr. Daniel Sharpe, will be hailed with pleasure by 

 students of cretaceous beds all over Europe. The portion published 

 emiiraces the Belemnites, the Nautili, and part of the Ammonites, 

 and contains descriptions and figures of 24 species, of which two are 

 wholly new, and six new to British lists. The range of cretaceous 

 strata from whence the specimens described have been procured, 

 extends from the Upper Chalk of Norfolk and Gravesend, to the 

 Chloritic marl of the Isle of Wight, and " Chalk -with green grains " 

 of Somersetshire. It is worthy of notice that of the Nautili described, 

 several are recorded as having an extensive vertical distribution ; thus 

 Naiitilus Icevigatus ranges from the Upper Greensand to the Upper 

 Chalk, whilst Nautilus pseiido-elegans, K. radiatus, N. 7ieocomiefisis, 

 and JV. undulatiis occur in both the upper and lower divisions of the 

 Cretaceous system ; in others words, both above and below the Gault. 

 Every fact of this kind well ascertamed, is of no small interest at 

 present, when there is an extreme and unwholesome tendency on the 

 part of many palaeontologists to insist a priori upon the distinctness 

 of species coming from different stages, and to force their diagnoses 

 according-lv. 



