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NOTES ON THE CARBONIFEROUS POLYZOA OF WEST YORKSHIRE 
AND DERBYSHIRE (AN ATTEMPT TO IDENTIFY PHILLIPS’ SPECIES ). 
BY GEORGE ROBERT VINE. 
For many years past I have made several unavailing attempts to 
identify, and re-describe, the Carboniferous Polyzoa of our older 
Paleontologists. I ascribe my failure rather to the scarcity of 
material than to any want of distinctness on the part of the original 
describers. There is, as a matter of course, the original specimens — 
especially of Phillips and McCoy — but these were not available for 
my work, and I prefered to depend upon later findings, comparing 
the new with the written details of authors. It is pretty well 
known, that after the publication of Goldfuss’ Petrifacta Germanise, 
that this work was the source of much of our information respecting 
Fossil Zoophyta ; and accordingly many of our British examples 
were furnished with the generic, if not the specific names of Goldfuss. 
In the Petrifacta there are but few species figured or described 
from Carboniferous rocks. To this cause we owe the original des- 
criptions of Phillips, who, writing only a year or so after the issue 
of the German work, was able to furnish a rather goodly list of 
Carboniferous species. In his edition of the Geology of Yorkshire, 
p. 195 (1829 Ed.) Phillips says “ Few of the Mountain Limestone 
districts of England are deficient in remains of Corals, Crinoidea, &c., 
whether as in Derbyshire and Mendip we contemplate the lower 
thick mass of Calcareous rock, or as in the North-West of Yorkshire, 
and in Northumberland examine the thinner portion which alternate 
with shales, gritstones, &c. Several of the same species are 
common in the whole range of the formation, and perhaps, if the 
local catalogues were more complete and more correct, it is probable 
that a very general conformity would be found to prevail in this 
respect.” 
Since the issue of the Geology of Yorkshire, a very steady 
progress has been made in either the discovery of new Carboniferous 
species of Polyzoa in Great Britain, or in showing the wider range 
of species identical with those described by Phillips. McCoy in his 
various works added much to our knowledge of Carboniferous 
Polyzoa, — and later still Prof. Young, and Mr. John Young, of 
