ON MADREPORARIA FROM THE LIAS OF ENGLAND AND 8S. WALES. 9303 
27. A Comparative and CriticaL Revision of the MADREPORARIA 
of the Wurrr Lias of the Mippite and Western Countins of 
EneLanp, and of those of the ConeLoMERATE at the base of the 
SourH-Wates Lras. By Roser. F. Tomzs, Esq., F.G.S. (Read 
March 19, 1884.) 
[Puate XIX.] 
THE purpose of the present paper is a twofold one—to point out the 
identity of certain Madreporaria from the Rhetic White Lias of 
Warwickshire and the Western counties with species from the 
South-Wales Liassic Conglomerate, and to show that a greater 
number than has been supposed are identical also with corals from 
the St. Cassian beds. 
In 1878, when my paper on Liassic Corals was published in the 
Society’s Journal*, I thought I had exhausted the whole of the 
material at command. However, a recent examination of Prof. 
Duncan’s types of species of Madreporaria from the Glamorganshire 
Lias, collected by the late Mr. Moore, and now in the Bath Museum, 
and the acquisition of a considerable collection made at Sutton 
during the present year (1883) by my friends Mr. W.C. Lucy, F.G.S., 
and Mr. T. J. Slatter, F.G.S., and by myself, has led me to re- 
examine the several species. The results of such examination I 
now lay before the Society ; but before doing so, it is desirable that 
I should briefly notice the several papers which have appeared on 
the subject. Unfortunately the greater part of them are so far con- 
troversial, and even contradictory within themselves, as to render 
their conclusiors, to say the least of it, far less valuable than they 
otherwise would have been. 
_ In 1863 I published, in the ‘ Proceedings of the Cotteswold Natu- 
ralists’ Field Club,’ a brief notice of the South-Wales Lower Lias, 
in which, on account of the presence of the supposed Rheetic oyster, 
Plicatula intusstriata, I claimed for the basement-beds a date corre- 
sponding to the Rheetic age. A communication on the same subject 
by the late Mr. Tawney was read at one of the meetings of the 
Geological Society, in 1865, in which the whole of the conglomerate 
beds of Sutton and Dunraven and other places in South Wales were 
declared to be Rhetic}. Shortly afterwards papers on these same 
deposits were contributed by Mr. Moore t, Mr. Bristow §, and Mr. 
Tate ||, and published in the Journal. In all of them these con- 
glomerate beds, observed at the base of the Glamorganshire Lias, 
were stated to be nothing more than true Lias. Of these latter 
contributions, by far the most valuable is the one by Mr. Tate, his 
conclusions being chiefly derived from paleontological evidence. In 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxxiv. p. 179. 
t Vol. xxii. p. 69, 1866. Read December 6th, 1865. 
' £ Vol. xxii. p. 449, 1867. Read March 20th, 1867. 
§ Vol. xxiii. p. 199, 1867. Read March 20th, 1867. 
| Vol. xxiii. p. 805, 1867. Read May 22nd, 1867. 
