281 
one spot to the other. But when it is considered what prodigious 
masses are often formed by one species of coral, as in the recent coral 
reefs in the South Sea, it will naturally occur to the mind of every 
one that, in cabinet specimens of fossils, which are the small fragments 
of such masses mineralized, by far the greater number of specimens 
may be expected to be found not possessing this, the most charac- 
teristic surface of the fossil. 
Instances of the vast quantities in which these corals were accumu- 
lated may be found in various marbles of which they form the basis, 
and which are in masses sufficiently large to allow of being cut into 
slabs of very considerable size, and to shew that they could not have 
been brought by the waves to the places where they now are found. 
Corals, in a mineralized state, yield also ample testimony of similar 
species having congregated together in particular places. The Swedish 
Islands of Gothland and Oeland, as well as many other parts of 
Sweden; Worcestershire, Shropshire, Perthshire, Fifeshire, and many 
other parts of Great Britain, possess considerable numbers of the simple 
turbinated madrepore.^ In Wales, are to be found considerable 
masses of the remains of the curious madrepore, distinguished, by 
Lhwydd, as Lithostrotion^ site Basaltes minimus striatus et stellatus. In 
Westmoreland, Cumberland, the bishopric of Durham, and several 
other parts of Great Britain, as well as of the Continent, are consi- 
derable accumulations of particular species of the aggregated and 
compound madrepores. 
The softer zoophytes, such as the sponges, alcyonia, &c. evince still 
stronger marks of their not having been conveyed by torrents to their 
present residences. Many of these are of such a structure as certainly 
could not have borne such a conveyance with so little injury as is dis- 
coverable in the several specimens, which have been examined in the 
* I lately received, from some unknown friend, two of these fossils, which were found 
about thirty feet deep, in a mass of calcareous rock, at Lord Elgin’s lime-works, on the 
banks of the Firth of Forth, in Fifeshire. 
VOL. II. 
O O 
