74 
led to their admission among the corals, and so essentially different 
are these specimens from any zoophyte with which I am acquainted, 
that it appears to be of very little consequence where they are, at 
present, introduced, so long as they are permitted to form a distinct 
genus. To this distinction they seem to be fully entitled, since their 
globular form alone separates them from all other genera. The fos- 
sils of this species, or genus, may be described as silicious or calcareous 
masses of small bodies, of a compressed globular form, connected by minute 
fibrilla or tuhuli. 
The calcareous stone, Plate VIII. Fig. 1, appears, on a superficial 
view, from its being composed of small globular bodies, about the 
size of a poppy-seed, to resemble those stones which, from their fan- 
cied likeness to the eggs of fishes, or to certain seeds, have obtained 
the names of oolithi cenchrites, meconites, &c. but the eye, aided by 
a lens, soon discovers a material difference. A section of those stones 
being made it is found, that the little round bodies of which they are 
composed, possess a laminated structure ; from which those who 
have possessed a warm imagination, have been led to fancy that 
they could perceive the yolk contained within the albuminous part, 
and the latter surrounded by a shell. But in the stone now under 
examination, and which is formed of a white calcareous matter, not 
bearing a spathose appearance, the little roundish bodies, which are 
imbedded in a matrix of a similar substance with themselves, have evi- 
dently a more compressed form than the bodies just spoken of, and in 
the centre of their superior part, in a little depression, a small pro- 
minence, like the commencement of a minute process, may be seen. 
It is true that this peculiarity of structure is not discoverable in all 
these little bodies : on the contrary, by far the greater part of them, 
having been worn down by weathering or bowldering, display their 
internal structure only ; but of this no more can be said than that 
it manifests no appearance of lamination. The peculiar structure ob- 
servable on those which have not sustained any injury seems decidedly 
