Note 30 — FOSSIL FAUNA.
Reading edition
Mr. Morris thus defines the generic character of these fossil bodies:—"Reticular masses of a more or less compressed globular, elliptical, or polygonal form; rugose and sometimes papillose; connected by minute tubuli or fibrillæ. Dendritical, dichotomous, or irregularly aggregated." Clionites Conybeari is characterized by "Cells irregular, somewhat polygonal, with one or more papillæ; surface finely tuberculated, connecting threads numerous." Note from Mr. Morris, April, 1850.
The fossils, however, do not appear to be the silicified sponge (Cliona) by which the ravages in the shell have been effected; they are merely casts of the cavities produced.