91 
to be not improbable ; and indeed appears to afford a satisfactory mode 
of explaining this curious fact. 
That the bodies now about to be more particularly described are 
the remains of animals of a former world, seems to require no stronger 
proof, than the circumstance of these inhabitants of the sea being 
found in their changed state, in mountains much elevated above the 
level of the sea, and at a considerable distance from the situations 
which it now possesses. Whilst treating of the fossil corals, many 
were pointed out, whose recent analogues were positively not as yet 
known, and which were therefore conjectured to be the remains of 
certain species which might be now extinct. Any opinion of this 
kind with respect to these animals appears to be hardly admissible; 
since from the innumerable recesses in which they lurk, and still more 
from the comparatively small degree of eagerness with which they have 
been sought, we are totally unable to form any conjecture, as to the 
number of those which may have hitherto entirely escaped observation. 
Analogy indeed may lead us to conclude that by far the greater part 
of these fossil bodies are actually the remains of extinct species ; but 
where evidence of a stronger kind cannot be also obtained, the fact 
must be considered as undetermined. 
Having made these few prefatory remarks, I shall now proceed 
to a more particular examination of such fossils of this description, in 
my possession, as are most illustrative of the history of these extraor- 
dinary animals. 
Those which are of a ramified form seem to be most rarely found in 
a mineralized state. The specimen, however, which is figured Plate 
VII. Fig. 12, and which was found in Berkshire, is undoubtedly the 
fossil remains of one of these species ; although it is impossible to say 
to what particular ramified species it belongs, or whether indeed it is 
at all referable to any known species. 
An examination of the substance of this fossil, now a mixture of 
silex and carbonate of lime, affords us internal evidence of its origin ; 
