92 
CARBONIFEROUS CORALS AND BRACHIOPODS 
number are, unfortunately, insufficiently located or totally 
devoid of any location whatsoever. In the case of the 
great majority of located specimens I am able to confirm 
the locality from personal knowledge, and there are, in fact, 
only a very few cases where I feel doubtful whether the 
specimens were actually derived from local sources. 
The collection has a certain value beyond that common 
to all collections which contain specimens correctly located. 
It throws a considerable light upon the actual fossils which 
Stoddart intended to denote, in his paper on the Avon Sec- 
tion,^ in those cases in which his naming appears to be errone- 
ous. Unfortunately, however, very many of the species men- 
tioned by Stoddart in his paper are not represented in the 
collection or, at least, are not so labelled ; in other cases 
there are several very distinct forms classed under the 
same name, so that, in the absence of detailed location on 
the specimens themselves, it becomes impossible to assign 
any particular one of the forms to its correct bed in his 
sequence. 
This brings us naturally to a consideration of the second 
desideratum in the labelling of specimens, namely, the 
necessity of appending a name which shall convey to any 
one who has access to Carboniferous literature a clear 
conception of the particular form so labelled, and of no 
other. It is just here that we are at present considerably 
handicapped. The species and mutations of Carboniferous 
forms which have as yet been figured do not cover nearly 
all, even of the commonest, forms. 
The particular specific name under which an author 
places a specimen, other than the type itself, is not a matter 
of great consequence so long as he figures it ; his allocation 
of the figure to one species rather than to another is merely 
the expression of his personal opinion as to its closest 
affinities ; but whether he is right or wrong, his figure 
1 “ Geology of the Bristol Coalfield,” Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc. 1875. 
