Correspondence — Dr. P. Martin Duncan. 197 



CYGLOPHYLLUM FUNGITi:S, Flem. sp. 



Sir, — In your report of tho Meeting of the Geological Society of 

 Glasgow, December 12, 1867 (Geol. Mag. Vol. V. No. 3, p. 142), I 

 find that Mr. John Young is made to assert that " Dr. Duncan's 

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

 not already known, etc., etc." Mr. Young also appears to have 

 stated that David Ure was the original discoverer of the genus in 

 question, and that Professor M'Coy had clearly delineated the various 

 parts constituting the internal organization of the coral. To these 

 statements I must give my most unqualified contradiction. 



It can be readily seen in David Ure's good old book that he 

 believed the curved horn-shaped coral in question was one of the 

 ''class Coralloides,''^ or "sub-marine plants," and that it grew with 

 its broad calicular end downwards. He called the coral Fungites, 

 but gave neither a generic nor a specific name to it. 



Fleming classified the coral in the genus Turhinolia, and gave it 

 the specific name fungites. All subsequent generic names should be 

 followed by Fleming's specific name. 



M'Coy described the coral, and a drawing of its anatomy appeared 

 with the description in Sedgwick and M'Coy, Brit. Pal. Foss. 1855, 

 plate 3C, figs. 5 and 5a. He named it Clisiophyllum prolapsum. He 

 was neither justified in his genus nor in his change of the specific 

 name. M'Coy neither drew nor saw what is so evident in the scores 

 of sections which Mr. Thomson has prepared of the species of coral in 

 question. M'Coy's drawings of Clisiophyllum show a solid lamellar 

 columella in the axis of the corals he properly described as belonging 

 to that genus, but there is no such structure in his Clisiophyllum 

 prolapsum. 



There is a columella in the Fungites of Ure, the Turhinolia fungites 

 of Fleming, the Clisiophyllum prolapsum of M'Coy, — it is not a solid 

 lamella, but a series of ascending processes which pass from the base 

 to the depression at the bottom of the calice, which is surrounded by 

 the coronet of internal septa. 



Milne Edwards and Jules Haime separated the " fungites " from 

 the genus Clisiophyllum, and their specimens were not sufficiently 

 well preserved or cut to enable them to discover the arrangement of 

 the septa and columellary processes within the endothecal tissue which 

 separates the coral into inner and outer portions. 



Mr. Thomson and I claim these as new points, and considering 

 that septal and columellary structures are of paramount importance in 

 recent corals, we have a right to esteem them worthy of the conside- 

 ration of all who have the slightest possible knowledge concerning 

 the anatomy and physiology of the Zoantharia. 



P. Martin Duncan. 



Lee, S.E., March 13, 1868. 



THE TRIAS OF CHARNWOOD FOREST. 

 Sir,— The paper in your last number, on Charnwood Forest,by the 



