CORALS FROM THE INFERIOR OOLITE. 126 



CHAPTER XL 



CORALS FROM THE INFERIOR OOLITE. 



The corals found in the Inferior OoHte of England belong to twenty-seven species, 

 seventeen of which have not as yet been met with on the continent. Most of these fossils 

 (twenty-one species) belong to the family of Astreidce ; two species belong to the family of 

 TarhinolidcB, and two to the family of Fmi(jidcB ; one appears to belong to the family of 

 Cyai]ioj)hyllid(2 ; we refer it, with some hesitation, to the genus Zaphrentis, and must 

 particularly point out its existence here as being the last representative of that important 

 family, w^hich was so abundant in the older geological periods, and is almost ex- 

 clusively characteristic of the Palaeozoic Formations. Most of the corals here described 

 have been seen only in the Inferior Oolite ; but three species {Stt/lina solida, Anahacia 

 orbulites, and Comoseris vermicular is) exist also in the Great Oolite. The principal 

 localities from which these fossils were obtained, are Dundry, Bath, and Castle Cary in 

 Somersetshire, Burton Bradstock in Dorsetshire, Wotton-under-edge and Crickley in 

 Gloucestershire. 



Family TURBINOLIDyE, (p. xi.) 

 Genus Discocyathus, (p. xiii.) 



DiscocYATHUS EuDESi, Tab. XXIX, figs. 1, \a, \b. 



Cyclolites Eudesii, Michelin, Icon. Zooph., p. 8, tab. ii, fig. 2, 1840 ; (bad figure.) 



— TRUNCATA, Befratice, MS. collection. 



Discocyathus Eudesii, Milne Edwards and J. Haime, Ann. des Sc. Nat., s. 3, voL ix, 



p. 297, tab. ix, fig. 7, 1848. 

 — — jyOrUgny, Prod, de Pale'ont., voL i, p. 291, 18.50. 



CoraUum simple, discoid ; its under surface flat or slightly concave, presenting a small 

 central dimple, and a thick epitheca with circular wrinkles. Calice shallow, slightly 

 depressed towards the centre. Columella lamellar, rather thin, free to a considerable 

 distance from its upper end, and terminated by an entire edge. Se^ita straight, rather 

 thin, very exsert exteriorly as well as upwards, and terminated by an arched, delicately- 

 crenulated edge ; they form four complete cycla, and an incomplete fifth cyclum in two or 

 four of the systems, very rarely in all ; those of the second cyclum almost as large as the 



