DESCRIPTION 



or 



THE BRITISH FOSSIL CORALS. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CORALS FROM THE SILURIAN FORMATION. 



At no period of the geological history do Polypi appear to have been more abundant, 

 and to have constituted as important a portion of the marine fauna, as at the time during 

 which the Silurian deposits were formed. The variety of species is here as considerable as 

 in most of the richest coralliferous rocks of a more recent date, and the number of 

 specimens is usually greater. But what contributes still more to the importance of the 

 study of the Silurian corals, is the good state of preservation in which they are generally 

 found. The environs of Dudley were long ago, and still are, celebrated for their numerous 

 fossil corals, as well as for the abundance of their trilobites ; of late years many other 

 localities, equally rich in palaeontological treasures, have been explored in various parts of 

 Great Britain ; and, at the present day, more than half of the species discovered in 

 the Silurian deposits of the new as well as of the old world, have been found in 

 England. This result is principally due to the indefatigable researches of Sir Roderick 

 Murchison and his followers. The British Silurian fossils found by that able and justly- 

 celebrated geologist, were described and figured in his standard work by Mr. Lonsdale, 

 who referred most of them to the species previously described by Goldfuss, and found 

 by that naturalist in the Devonian deposits of the Eifel Mountains in Germany. This 

 supposed identity, however, does not exist in any of the well-characterised species. The 

 specimens figured by Mr. Lonsdale in Sir R. Murchison's work, have been communicated 

 to us for examination by the Council of the Geological Society of London, and on 

 comparing them with the specimens figured by Goldfuss, and placed by that author in the 

 Poppelsdorf Museum at Bonn, we have been able to ascertain that almost all of them are 

 specifically different. M. D'Orbigny, without having had an opportunity of making any 

 such direct comparison, came at the same time to a similar conclusion ; and the 

 researches of Professors Sedgwick and M'Coy fully confirm this result. 



33 



