age. Mr. Tate did not consider these sandstones the equivalent of the Patagonian sandstones, as the latter, from the shells contained in them, would appear to he Pliocene or Pleistocene.
Mr. Sawkins, in reply to a question from Mr. Tate, stated that the only gold found in the country had probably been carried down from the well-known gold-district of Upata. He also entered into a few additional details connected with the chief points in his paper, dwelling especially upon the physical features of the country, in illustration of which several landscape drawings were exhibited.
June 7, 1871.
Henry Collinson, Esq., 7 Devonshire Place, Portland Place, W., and Thomas Milnes Favell, Esq., of Eighton College, Gateshead, were elected Fellows, and Dr. J. J. Kaup, of Darmstadt, was elected a Foreign Member of the Society.
The following communications were read : —
1. On the Persistence of Caryophyllia cylindracea, Reuss, sp., a Cretaceous Species of Coral, in the Coral fauna of the Deep Sea. By P. Martin Duncan, M.B. Lond., F.R.S., F.G.S., Professor of Geology in King's College, London. ■
The simple stony coral Caryophyllia cylindracea, Reuss, sp., is, comparatively speaking, a common fossil in the White Chalk.
Lonsdale described the form, under the name of Monocarya centralis, in Dixon's ' Geol. of Sussex,' 1850 ; but it appears that MM. Milne- Edwards and J. Haime had already named the species Cyathina loevigata in their Monographie des Turbinolides, ' Ann. des Sci. Nat.' 3e serie, t. ix. p. 290, 1848.
D'Orbigny recognized the species in 1850 as a form which had been described by Reuss in 1846 under the name of Anthophyllum cylindraceum (' Kreideformation,' p. 61, pl. 14. figs. 23-30); and after altering the generic title, he created that of Cyathina cylindracea.
MM. Milne-Edwards and Jules Haime described the coral in their monograph of the British Fossil Corals (Palaeontog. Society, 1850) under the name Cyathina loevigata, and, after recognizing the priority of Reuss in their ' Hist. Nat. des Coralliaires,' finally accepted the name of Caryophyllia cylindracea, Reuss, sp.
I have referred to the species in the Supplement to the ' British Fossil Corals' (Palaentog. Soc.) and in the Report on the British Fossil Corals to the British Association.
Hitherto Caryophyllia cylindracea, Reuss, has been considered a characteristic fossil of the White Chalk ; and its horizon does not appear to have reached that of the uppermost beds of that series.
