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closely and spirally disposed. By the same lens I was enabled to 
trace similar lines, undulating on several parts of the flatter surface , 
and, in one or two spots, could discover six or eight of these lines, run- 
ning pretty straight, close and parallel with each other, and connected 
together by numerous lateral minute fibres or tubuli, giving the ap- 
pearance of a species of microscopic tubipore, rather than ot mille- 
pore, madrepore, or alcyonium. A magnified figure of this part ot 
the fossil is presented Plate XIL Fig. 13, c. 
But were we even capable of determining the genus of this microsco- 
pic polypean fabric, still we, perhaps, should thereby make but little 
progress, in ascertaining the real nature of the large ramose bodies, 
which seem to bear no other relationship to the minute tubipo- 
rean bodies just described, than merely serving as a ground-work, on 
which they have been formed Of the real nature of the ramose bo- 
dies themselves, I must confess myself unable to form a conjecture 
which seems to make any approach to probability. That they are the 
remains of some animal substances, formed by the labours of poly- 
pes, appears to be indubitable, from the situation in which they are 
found, and from the bodies with which they are associated ; but 
every character which they possess, differs materially from those of any 
known substance, which has been marked by the pen or pencil of the 
natural historian, as deriving its origin from such a source. 
On examining the substance of which these several fossils of St. Pe- 
ter’s Mountain are formed, numerous variously figured cavities are 
observable, evidently formed by shells and other marine bodies, which, 
having been removed, have left spaces exactly corresponding with the 
forms which they possessed. It is most probably from this circum- 
stance, that some, especially Mr. Walch, have been led to the suspi- 
cion, that the various figured bodies which we have been here examin- 
ing, have been all casts or impressions of different substances of a co- 
ralline nature, which have been involved in the mass, whilst it was in 
a soft or fluid state; but having been since removed by decomposi- 
