40 
may be concealed by the spathose matter with which the fossil is 
penetrated. 
The honey-comb appearance of this fossil is very striking. The 
resemblance which it bears to a honey-comb is indeed sufficiently 
great to account for, and to excuse the relations we meet with of 
petrified honey-combs ; in which some have even fancied they have dis- 
covered the relics of the bees which had perished with their dwelling. 
So completely is this madrepore mineralized, that the coralline substance 
of which it was composed is now entirely converted to a spathose 
matter, exhibiting a shining fracture. So great indeed is the change 
which it has sustained, that it was not until I had submitted it to 
examination by a lens, that I was fully convinced that it was not a 
fragment of the spathose septa of a septarium, the tali of which had 
been formed of a loose ferruginous earth. But by this examination 
the perpendicular striae on the sides of the tubes were discovered, and 
the real nature of the substance determined. This fossil was separated 
from a lime-stone at Masbury, on Mendip, near Weils, by J. Herbert, 
Esq. of Bristol, a gentleman whose knowledge of extraneous fossils 
renders his communications highly valuable. This gentleman’s liberal 
assistance I shall have repeated occasion to acknowledge. 
Madrepora ananas is figured as a fossil by Bromell, Helwinge, 
Wolfart, Volkmann, Fougt, and others; but I have not seen any fossil 
specimen which could with certainty be referred to this particular 
species. 
This coral is composed of angular stars, which, in its recent state, 
being convex at their edges, and having depressions in their centre 
and interstices, give somewhat of the appearance of the surface of a 
pine apple. But in almost all the representations which I have seen 
of this madrepore in a fossil state, the surface appears to have been 
so smoothed by attrition, as to render it very difficult to determine to 
which of the stellated madrepores it belonged. The nearest approach 
to this madrepore which I have seen, is the specimen from Sweden, 
