142 Reports and Proceedings. 



of the great Holdemess deposit, and not met with beyond the out- 

 crop of the Chalk, it must be designated a third Boulder-clay ; and 

 he concluded his paper by a detailed description of his original 

 observations of the Hessle cliff more than forty years ago. 



Geological Society of Glasgow. — At the usual monthly meeting 

 on Thursday evening, Dec. 12, — Dr. Young, president, in the chair,^ 



Mr. J. Thomson exhibited specimens of Carboniferous corals of 

 the genera CUsiophyllum, Cyclophyllum Duncan and Thomson, and 

 AulopJiyllum Edwardsi, sp. nov., D. and T. ; and entered into ex- 

 planations of the structural characters upon which these forms 

 were established 



Mr. John Young made some remarks upon this so-called new 

 genus of corals, Oyclophyllum fungites, and stated that since the time 

 of David Ure (who was the original discover of the genus in 

 question) this coral had been changed from one genus to another 

 by Palaeontologists, no less than two new genera having been 

 established to receive it, and he doubted very much if it had yet 

 found its final resting-place. He deprecated very much the estab- 

 lishing of generic distinctions upon small and unimportant points in 

 any organism, as tending to burden science with useless synonyms. 

 He further pointed out that Professor M'Coy had clearly delineated 

 the various parts constituting the internal organization of this coral. 



And in his remarks upon the genus Aulophyllum of Milne Edwards 

 (of which lire's coral was the type), M'Coy showed that the 

 characters which he relied upon as points of generic distinction 

 only serve to characterise a well-marked species. Dr. Duncan's 

 figures reveal no new points in the structure of this coral which 

 were not already known, and however much Dr. Duncan may differ 

 from Professor M'Coy and other Palseontologists who have worked 

 upon this genus, in his interpretation of the various points of 

 structure therein displayed, yet he (Mr. Young) thought that these 

 points were so small and unimportant as hardly to warrant it being 

 again placed in a new genus. 



Mr. Thomson, in replying to Mr. Young's remarks, drew attention 

 to two errors of Ure's ; first, that he described the corallum referred 

 to by Mr. Young as being broad at the base, a feature presented 

 by Amplexus only; second, that he gives Kilbride as the locality, 

 whereas Mr. Thomson had not found in any of the Kilbride localities 

 any other turbinated Coral than Zaplirentis. Mr. Thomson repeated 

 the structural characters of Clisiopliyllum, Aulophyllum, and Cyclo- 

 phyllum, and insisted on the* essential difference of the latter from 

 the two former in this, that the endothecal structure of its columella 

 is formed by a system of down-curved sub-convolute plates passing 

 from the inner margin of the minute lamella of the essential colu- 

 mella ; and that a groove was thus formed round the inner ends of 

 the primary septa and the columella by the curvatures of those 

 plates, and that the minute septa coalesced and formed a system of 



^ The report of this meeting was unavoidably delayed. 



