KAEAKOUAM STONES, OE STEINGOSPH^EIDA]. 
3 
The late distinguished Palaeontologist to the Geological Survey of India had traced these 
remarkahle spheroids to their time and place in the succession of rocks, and he expressed an 
opinion regarding their zoological position. They were found in shales beneath limestones, 
which were certainly lower than the Lias, and which were probably triassic in age. The term 
'‘coral” was singularly justified, for some of the superficial markings on the stones resemble, 
in their radiate appearance and regularity, the casts of the cahces of minute Madreporaria of 
the genera Astrocoenia and Styloccenia. But it is only necessary to remark that Stoliczka’s 
great knowledge of the Antliozoa would have led him to the expression of a different opinion 
had his specimens been prepared for microscopic examination. 
The so-called Karakoram stones collected during the second Yarkand Expedition by my 
lamented friend were placed in my hands by Mr. W. T. Blanford in 1878. 
The specimens are numerous and in very perfect condition; the weathering to which 
some have been subjected rendering the outside details all the more visible. Their surfaces 
are free from other fossils, and a broken serpula tube is the only one to be recognised. 
Eossilization has occurred by the introduction of calcite, and this is usually somewhat 
dark in colour, but is transparent in thin sections. The original structure of the body now 
consist of carbonate of lime of a different and lighter colour to the infiltrated calcite, and it 
appears that on the outside of the fossils the original structure has usually disappeared and 
the intermediate or infiltrated mineral has lasted. 
Carefully made radial and tangential sections of the fossils, assisted by biting out with 
dilute acids, and the use of low and high powers of the microscope, assisted by the polarising 
apparatus, rendered their remarkable construction evident, and also that it was necessary to 
include all the Karakoram stones in a new order of Jiliizopoda called the Syringosph(Brid(B. 
A notice of this new order was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History 
for October 1878, Ser. 5, Yol. II, page 297. 
II.— The geneeal moephology oe the Eossils, theie histology, and theie position 
IN THE OLASSIEICATOEY SCALE. 
The Karakoram stones are either nearly perfectly spherical, or more or less spheroidal 
or ellipsoidal in shape. They may be of small size, and some are more than three inches in 
their greatest diameter; but they are always symmetrical, and there is no trace of a stalk or 
of any former attachment by the surface to other bodies. Some forms are nearly smooth, 
others are minutely granular, each granule having a definite construction, and the most 
numerous types have tubercules, wart-like growths, and large eminences crowded, more or 
less, with papillse and little warts upon them. There is one group of forms with a very 
verrucose surface, and, on the other hand, another type is covered with a finely granulate 
surface : nevertheless this external structure does not interfere with the general curvature of 
the Tass, the tops of iie highest and lowest eminences never exceeding their symmetrical 
position. 
The more rugose and mammilated surfaces of the fossils have small circular or deformed 
shallow pits scattered here and there; they are very numerous in some of the types with 
rounded surface tubercles, and are but scantily distributed in others, and whilst they crowd 
the surface of one lorm with a granular surface, they do not exist on another. These pits 
become elongate on the equatorial part of some of the spheroidal fossils, and are found on the 
