296 BRITISH FOSSIL CORALS. 



they join those of the surrounding corallites. Calicular fossula rather shallow ; in all the 

 specimens we have seen it was much clogged up with extraneous matter, but there was 

 still some appearance of a styliform, slightly compressed columella, and of a crucial mode 

 of arrangement of the principal septa. Septa (24 or 26,) well developed, rather thick, of 

 unequal size alternately, and slightly exsert. Diameter of the calice about 1 line. 



The British specimens examined by us were found in the upper Silurian rocks at 

 Dudley, and in the inferior Silurian deposits at Coniston. Professor M'Coy 

 mentions its existence at Coniston Water Head, Lancashire; Sunny Brow near 

 Coniston ; High Haume, Dalton in Furness, Lancashire ; Long Steddale, Westmore- 

 land ; Applethwaite Common, Westmoreland. It is also found in Gothland, in 

 Groningue, and in Russia. 



Specimens are in the Collections of the Paris Museum, Bristol Museum, of the 

 Geological Society "of London, and M. de Verneuil. 



Professor M'Coy thinks that the name of Sarcinula ought to be applied to this genus, 

 because Lamarck considered the recent coral for which he established it as being identical 

 with the Madrepora Organum of Linne ; but we cannot adopt his opinion. For when 

 Lamarck formed his genus Sarcinula he had evidently in view the above-mentioned recent 

 coral, to which alone its characters are applicable, and the blunder he made consists only 

 in the misapplication of the Linnean name. This specimen, which still exists in the 

 public collection of the Parisian Museum, and has been figured in a recent work 1 , must 

 therefore receive a new specific name, but its generic name cannot be transferred to a fossil 

 that differs essentially from it, and that Lamarck had never an opportunity of examining. 



10. Genus Lonsdaleta (p. lxxii 2 ). 



LONSDALEIA WENLOCKENSIS. 



Strombodes -wenlockensts, M'Coy, Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., 2d ser., vol. vi, p. 274, 



1850. 

 _ _ M'Coy, Brit. Palaeoz. Foss., p. 34, pi. i B, fig. 28, 1851. 



" Corattum forming large, irregular masses of polygonal stems, the mouth of which vary 

 usually from 8 to 10 lines in diameter; boundary walls strong, prominent, vertically 

 sulcated on the inside ; stars depressed round the margin of the walls, forming a large 

 circular convexity nearer the centre, within which is a concavity from which rises the thick 

 prominent compound axis ; radiating lamella) 24 in small specimens, 30 in large ones, 

 strongest and most prominent in the circular convexity of the star, where an equal number 

 of small alternate ones disappear; a vertical section shows the thick central axis composed of 



1 Milne Edwards, in Regne Anim. de Cuvier, Zooph., pi. 85, fig. 1. 

 2 Under the name of Lithostrotium. 



