E. Emmons on New Fossil Corals from North Carolina. 389 



Art. XXXIII. — On New Fossil Corals from North Carolina; by 

 E. Emmons. (From a letter to one of the Editors.) 



The fossils which. I herewith transmit for your examination 

 occur in Montgomery Co., N. 0. I regard them as the oldest 

 organic bodies yet discovered. But that you or your readers 

 may be furnished with facts upon which they may form their 

 opinions, I will state the relations of the masses in which they 

 are found both with the inferior primary series, and the over- 

 lying rocks which immediately succeed the beds in which they 

 are found. 



1. Talcose slates in connexion with granite or gneissoid 

 granite. 



2. Brecciated conglomerate from 300 to 400 feet thick. Parts 

 of this mass are porphyrized. 



3. Slaty breccia associated with chert or hornstone. 



4. Granular quartz, which is in part vitrified and filled with 

 this fossil and with siliceous concretions, which are about the size 

 of almonds. It is 250-300 feet thick. 



5. Slaty quartzite, its fossils much less numerous. It is 40 

 feet thick. 



6. Slaty sandstone without fossils, 50 feet. 



7. White quartz, more or less vitrified, filled with fossils and 

 almond-shaped concretions. 



8. Jointed granular quartz, similar to that of Berkshire Co., 

 Mass., with only a few fossils. 



9. Vitrified quartz without fossils, 30 feet thick. 



10. Granular quartz, no fossils, thickness great, but unde- 

 termined. 



11. Overlying these siliceous beds is a clay slate like that so 

 common in Eensselaer and Columbia Cos., N. York. As yet, it 

 has yielded me no fossils. The slate as a whole, remains un- 

 changed, but frequently contains vitrified beds, or silicified ones, 

 the origin of which I do not propose to speak of at this time. 



la 16 lc 



It is evident the fossil is a coral. Among the specimens I think 

 I can recognize two species. The generic name which I have 

 given it is Palceotrochis, " Old Messenger" the smaller is the P. 

 minor (fig. 1), the larger, P. major, fig. 2. 



