AND AFFINITIES OF GUYNIA ANNULATA. 
31 
age, and that there has not been a break in the succession of coral species by descent 
since the first of them appeared in the seas of old. If the supporters of the hypothesis 
which restricts the Rugosa to the Palaeozoic rocks had studied the great work of the di- 
stinguished French zoophytologists so often mentioned by me, they would have found that 
the following words occur therein : — “ Le groupe des Zoanthaires rugeux . . . se compose 
presqu’entierement d’especes fossiles appartenant aux terrains anciens”*. The exception 
alluded to was a most remarkable and striking one, which was well known to every 
geologist of note. Lonsdale^ had described a common fossil which was discovered by 
Fitton in the Lower Greensand of Atherfield : it was a coral with rugose characteristics, 
and MM. Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime placed it amongst the Rugosa and named 
it Holocystis elegans , Lonsdale, sp. The specimens are abundant, and they evidently 
grew and lived in the Neocomian seas. The existence of the species was considered to 
have been anomalous ; but it excited much attention amongst those palaeontologists who 
were disposed to consider such anomalies as broken links in a great chain of evidence. 
Any forms which might connect the Neocomian species with the Palaeozoic were eagerly 
sought for, but without success ; and the distinctness of the Palaeozoic and Neozoic coral- 
faunas (excepting the Zoantharia tabulata, about which much may be said) might still 
be generally admitted, had not the results of the explorations of the sea-floor by the 
Americans and by the naturalists of the ‘ Porcupine ’ expeditions reopened the question. 
Count Pourtales J found a coral with rugose characteristics amongst the dredgings 
which were obtained from off the floor of the sea, five miles distant from the Florida 
reef, in 1868; he founded a new genus to receive the interesting form, and described 
it specifically as Haplogghyllia gparadoxa, Pourtales. Fortunately the living tissues were 
examined and described. 
Within the present year (1871) I have examined numerous specimens of a coral which 
is new to science, and which presents most marked rugose peculiarities. The specimens 
were dredged up in the last expedition of the ‘ Porcupine ’ from off the Adventure Bank 
in the Mediterranean § , and their description forms the most important part of this 
communication. 
The presence of two genera of Rugosa in the existing coral-fauna has led me to 
examine the rugose peculiarities of several species of the genus Conosmilia which were 
described by me in an essay on the Fossil Corals of the Australian Tertiary Deposits ||, and 
also to reconsider the evidence offered respecting the descent of many Lower Liassic corals 
from Palaeozoic Rugosa, and which was published in 1867 
With a view to connect this evidence with the results of the reconsideration of the 
Australian species just alluded to and the discovery of the recent Rugosa, I have intro- 
* Hist. Nat. des Corail. vol. iii. p. 324. f Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. v. 1849. 
+ Contributions to the Fauna of the Gulf-stream at great depths, 2nd series, 1868 (L. F. Pourtales). 
§ Carpenter and Jeffreys “ On Deep-sea Researches,” Proc. ltoyal Soc. vol. xix. pp. 175, 176. 
|| Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. September 1865, and Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. February 9, 1870. 
H Brit. Foss. Corals, Supplement issued for 1867. Palseontographical Society, London. 
