AND AFFINITIES OF GUYNIA ANNULATA. 
35 
milia possesses the twisted ribbon-shaped columella of the subfamily Cary ophyll ace ce , 
the endotheca and septal margin of the Trochosmiliacece, and the irregular septal arrange- 
ment which was so common in the corals of the Oolitic age, and which, from its octo- 
meral type, reflected the Rugosa of Palaeozoic times.” 
The Geological Survey of Victoria sent me a great number of Miocene corals for 
examination and description, and the species were figured and described in an essay on 
the Fossil Corals of the Australian Tertiary Deposits, read before the Geological Society, 
February 9, 1870. The four well-marked species of the genus Conosmilia were examined 
and reconsidered ; but I could not separate them naturally into two groups, although 
three out of the four had the octomeral septal arrangement ; the fourth had the usual 
Neozoic hexameral type of septal apparatus. I wrote as follows*: — “The most inter- 
esting of the corals from the Cainozoic deposits of South Australia are the Conosmilice. 
It is a genus perfectly Australian in its abnormalities. A simple coral with a pellicular 
epitheca, having a beautiful herring-bone ornamentation, with an essential, twisted, 
“serialaire” columella with endothecal dissepiments, and with plain septa, which have 
the hexameral arrangement in some and the octomeral in others, is a form containing 
the elements of several classificatory series. The irregular septal arrangement amongst 
the closely allied species may be considered to depend upon atavism. Such octomeral 
cyclical arrangements occurred in some genera in the Lower-Greensand period and 
during the Oolites, &c.” 
When the rugose peculiarities of three out of the four species of this genus are considered 
in relation with the discoveries of existing corals belonging to the section Rugosa the 
opinion that they were due to recurrence to ancestral types may well be modified. Like 
Haplophyllia and Guynia the Conosmilice did not belong to a reef-fauna, but to those 
deep-sea faunas which contain so many persistent types. If the theory that the Conos- 
milice were originally of an hexameral septal type is correct, then the three out of the 
four known species have departed from it and reflect the peculiarities of the ancient 
Rugosa ; but if it be admitted that the genus belonged originally to the tetrameral or 
octomeral type (for they are identical), then these three Miocene forms were direct 
descendants of the Palaeozoic Rugosa, and the one hexameral species was a modification. 
Whichever theory is accepted, the descent from a Palaeozoic type is inferred. There is 
an interesting relation between so many recent Australian animals and plants and those 
of the late Palaeozoic and early Neozoic ages, that, believing in the possibility of the 
persistence of coral types belonging to those remote times, I have investigated the struc- 
tures of the Conosmilice with a view of associating three of the species with the Rugosa. 
The result is somewhat remarkable ; for it indicates that if the Conosmilice can be 
regarded as Bugosa , they must be placed amongst the Stauridce, in the neighbourhood of 
the genus Polycoelia , whose species are of Permian age in Europe. 
Conosmilia elegans, Dune., Conosmilia lituolus, Dune., and Conosmilia anomala, Dune., 
have, in addition to the rugose septal arrangement, an endotheca which closes otf the 
* Quart. Jouru. Geol. Soc. vol. xxvi. p. 309. 
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