14 PERMIAN FOSSILS. 



incurrent canals. The figure of this Sponge is reduced to half the size of the original 

 specimen. 



Mr. E. W. Binney, to whom I have much pleasure in dedicating this Sponge, has 

 obtained several examples from the Red Marls at Bedford, ten miles west of Manchester, 

 where it appears to be not uncommon. 



Genus Bothroconis} King. 



Diagnosis. — A creeping sponge. Surface pitted. Fibres irregularly reticulated. 

 Excurrent openings minute. Type, Bothroconis plana. King. 



Being unacquainted with the chemical composition of its skeleton, I have nothing 

 to offer regarding the afi&nities of this genus, except the suggestion, that it may be 

 related to the Conii of Mr. Lonsdale. 



Bothroconis plana, King. Plate II, figs. 7, la. 



Diagnosis. — A flat, wide-spreading Bothroconis. Bits cup-shaped, one sixteenth of 

 an inch in diameter. Interstitial areas a little less than the pits in width. 



The specimen from which figures 7, la, have been taken, is spread over an irregular 

 surface about six inches in diameter, but owing to long exposure to atmospheric and 

 other abrading influences, it is only in a few hollow, and consequently less exposed 

 parts, where the characters are preserved with any distinctness. The magnified 

 representation under figure la, Plate II, exhibits the regularly-margined, cup-shaped 

 pits {a) ; and the irregularly-reticulated intervening areas, furnished with pores (b), 

 which I am strongly disposed to regard as openings of the excurrent canals. This 

 species appears to be related to the larger Hydnopora (?) cyclostoma of Phillips, (vide 

 Geol. Yorksh., vol. ii, pi. ii, figs. 9, 10.) 



I have only been able to find this interesting Sponge in the Shell-limestone at 

 Tunstall Hill.' 



^ Etym. Bodpos, fovea ; and kov is, pulvis. 



^ The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. v, pp. 55-66, June, 1848. 

 ^ Mr. Jones informs me that he has found in the Shell-Umestone of Tunstall Hill a minute Sponge (?), 

 globular, and irregularly pitted, of about J^ inch diameter. 



