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Besides these, there were the Bryozoa, a small kind of Mollusk allied to the Clams, and very busy then in the ancient Coral work. They grew in communities, and the separate individuals are so minute that a Bryozoan stock looks like some delicate moss. They still have their place among the Reef-Building Corals, but play an insignificant part in comparison with that of their predecessors.
Syn. Gorgonia infundibuliformis, Goldf.; Retepora flustracea, Phillips. b. It sometimes attains a large size, single specimens measuring eight inches in width. The same bryozoan, with several other British species, is also found abundantly in the Permian of Germany. Productus horridus, Sowerby. Lingula Crednerii.
In others the plant-principle reappears; the worm-like creature retires from the free-moving life, attaches itself to a fixed base, and becomes the Bryozoan or the Echinoderm. To trace the development of these types in any detail is impossible. The early remains are not preserved.
Family, Tubuliporidae, of same author. Bryozoan of extinct genus, from the inferior or Coralline Crag, Suffolk. a. Exterior. b. Vertical section of interior. c. Portion of exterior magnified. d. Mr. Searles Wood estimates the total number of marine testaceous mollusca of the Coralline Crag at 350, of which 110 are not known as living, being in the proportion of thirty-one per cent extinct.
Some of the genera occurring fossil in Touraine, as the corals Astrea and Dendrophyllia, and the bryozoan Lunulites, have not been found in European seas north of the Mediterranean; nevertheless, the zoantharia of the faluns do not seem to indicate, on the whole, so warm a climate as would be inferred from the shells.
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