Ixiv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Messrs. Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime have contributed a valua- 

 ble addition to this volume by the completion of their Monograph 

 on the British Fossil Corals. This fifth part of their work con- 

 tains the Corals from the Silurian formation, the value of which, in 

 a geological point of view, is apparent from their extraordinary 

 abundance and relative importance during the period when the 

 Silurian deposits were formed. As the authors observe, the variety 

 of species is here as considerable as in most of the coralliferous 

 rocks of a more recent date, and what adds to the importance of the 

 study of Silurian corals, is the good state of preservation in which 

 they are generally found ; and so abundant are the fossil corals 

 found at Dudley and other localities, that at the present day more 

 than half the species discovered in the Silurian deposits of the West 

 as well as of the East Hemisphere have been found in England, chiefly 

 owing to the exertions of Sir R. Murchison and his followers. The 

 authors then observe that the British Silurian fossils were originally 

 described and figured by Mr. Lonsdale, who referred most of them 

 to the species previously described by Goldfuss from the Devonian 

 deposits of the Eifel ; but they add that this supposed identity does 

 not exist in any of the well-characterized species. After comparing 

 the specimens figured by Mr. Lonsdale in Sir R. Murchison's work 

 with those figured by Goldfuss and now in the Poppelsdorf Museum 

 at Bonn, they have ascertained that almost all are specifically differ- 

 ent, a conclusion at which M. d'Orbigny had also arrived, and which 

 is further confirmed by the researches of Prof. Sedgwick and Mr, 

 M'Coy. 



They add that the British Silurian Corals differ but little from 

 those of Gothland, and very much resemble those from Bohemia, 

 while they are generally distinct from those of the Silurian de- 

 posits of North America. The total number of species discovered 

 in the various Silurian deposits amounts to 129, all of which, with 

 the exception of eight, belong to the authors' divisions of Zoan- 

 tharia tabulata and Z. rugosa. Of these, seventy-six have been 

 found in England, and about half of these have not been met with 

 elsewhere. Sixty-eight of these British fossils belong to the families 

 of Favositidse and Cyathophyllidse, and the only species not be- 

 longing to the above-mentioned higher divisions are four Fungidse. 

 It may also be noticed, that most of them belong to the Upper 

 Silurian deposits. It only remains to mention that sixteen plates 

 accompany this portion of the Monograph, making altogether seventy- 

 two plates of British Fossil Corals. 



Mr. Darwin has contributed to this volume a monograph on the 

 Fossil Balanidse and Verrucidae of Great Britain, which, with the 

 Lepadidse already published, complete his work on the British Tho- 

 racic Cirripedes. Mr. Darwin observes in his Introduction, that as 

 yet only sixteen species in these two families have been found fossil 

 in Great Britain, and that of these sixteen, nine are still living forms. 

 It is probably owing to the extreme difliculty of identifying the 

 species in these Cirripede families that their study has been hitherto 

 so much neglected, as has been noticed by Mr. Darwin, and this is 



