XV. On the Origin of a remarkable class of Organic Impressions occurring in Nodules of Flint.
By. the Rev. William Conybeare, of Christ Church, Oxford, M.G.S.
THE suite of specimens accompanying the following notice are submitted to the inspection of the Geological Society, as illustrating the history of certain organic impressions which are found occurring in the flinty nodules of the chalk strata, and of which the real origin had previously escaped detection.
Mr. Parkinson, is I believe, the first naturalist who has noticed similar specimens; the following description of them is given in the second vol. of his valuable work on organic remains, and it is not possible to convey a more accurate idea of their external characters.
“Small round compressed bodies not exceeding the eighth of an inch in their longest diameters, and horizontally disposed, are connected by processes nearly of the fineness of a hair which pass from different parts of each of these bodies, and are attached to the surrounding ones; the whole of these bodies being thus held in connection.” Page 75, 76.
Mr. Parkinson proceeds to conjecture “that the formation of these bodies has been the work of some animal of a nature similar to the polypes by which the known Zoophytes are formed.” He therefore classes them among fossil corals of unknown genera, acknowledging at the same time that the circumstances which induced him thus to arrange them were very slight, and that they
