174 PROF. P. M. DUNCAN ON CYATHOPHYLLUM FLETCHERI. 
9. On CyatHoPHYLLUM Fiercnerti, Hd. & H., sp., from the WENLOCK 
SHALE, with Remarks on the Group to which it belongs. By 
Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B. (Lond.), F.R.S., V.-P. Geol. Soc. 
(Read January 24, 1883.) 
Tis coral occurs in the Wenlock shale, and the specimens are small 
and not numerous; those which are now under consideration come 
from Mr. G. Maw’s shale-workings. 
The forms are young, and have a deep calice with septa barely 
projecting ; there is a very perfect epitheca, and there are traces 
of costes beneath it and of crossbar-like structures between them. 
There are no synapticule between the septa, and a tabula closes in 
the calice below. 
The species is one of those which were associated by MM. 
Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime with the Fungide, under the 
genus Paleocyclus, in 1851. They remained thus included until 
1867. 
In the ‘ Philosophical Transactions’ of the Royal Society*, 1867, 
p- 651, pl. xxxil. figs. 6a-6e, a criticism of the genus Paleocyclus 
was published by me, and it was demonstrated from specimens and 
sections that the species included in it by MM. Milne-Edwards and 
Jules Haime couid not be associated with the Fungide. 
The necessity for examining into the minute structure of the 
Paleocycli came from the discovery of a Tertiary coral in Australia, 
which, from its shape, its possessing synapticule, and the absence of 
endothecal dissepiments was clearly a Fungid and a Paleocyclust.. 
To believe in the descent without modification of a coral from the 
Silurian to the Australian Cainozoic was improbable, and sections 
were therefore made of a series of Palwocych. It was stated in the 
essay (p. 651), that ‘the absence of synapticule was proved, as was 
also the presence of an inclined dissepimental endotheca at the sides, 
and of tabule in the centre of the corallites.” 
Then the cause of the error of the distinguished French zoologists, 
to whom the observer owed all his knowledge, was explained, and 
the essay concluded as follows :— 
“The removal of the genus Paleocyclus from the family of the 
Fungide is necessary, and it is very evident that the species classified 
* P. M. Duncan ‘On the genera Heterophyllia, Battersbyia, Paleocyclus, and 
Asterosmilia,’ Phil. Trans. 1867. 
+ Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. Sept. 1864, pl. vi. fig. 2. Milaschewitsch, in his 
‘Die Korallen der Nattheimer Schichten,’ u. Abtheil. p. 210, writes, in relation 
to certain Fungide, “ Die zweite aber gehort zu den Rugosen, wie das bereits 
durch Duncan und Kunth nachgewiesen wurde.” Herr Kunth’s relegation of 
Palgocyclus to the Rugosa occurred some years after the publication of my 
essay and drawings, and he added nothing new to what was well known. Kunth 
wrote in 1869. 
