On some unicellular algae parasitic within Silurian and Tertiary corals, with a notice of their presence in Calceola sandalina and other fossils

John Quekett described, in his lectures at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1851–1852, certain tubes or canals as being very frequently met with in the skeletons of corals; and in his Lectures on Histology, published in 1854, and which contained the subject matter of his previous discourses, he wrote as follows: “Confervoid growths also are very frequently met with in the skeletons of corals, as all these bodies possess animal matter which, decomposing after death, becomes a nidus for the development of confervæ; and hardly a section can be examined without exhibiting such an appearance as shown in fig. 78”. This figure shows long, short, and almost straight canals cutting across the normal coral structure at different angles.

In 1859 Kölliker gave the results of his examination of some corals to the Royal Society, in a communication “On the frequent occurrence of vegetable parasites in the hard structures of animals”. He said:—“All the genera of corals which I investigated contained parasitical fungi, viz. Astræa diffusa, Porites clavaria, Tubipora musica, Corallium rubrum, Oculina diffusa, Oculina sp., Alloporina mirabilis, Madrepora cornuta, Lophohelia prolifera and Nullipora alcicornis. The fungi were most frequent in the genera Tubipora, Astræa, Porites and Oculina, the last three of which contained also many sporangia, which in the red coral were very scarce or wanting”

Before Quekett lectured, and contemporaneously with his and Kölliker's researches, Dr. Carpenter and C. Wedl investigated the corresponding tubes or canals in shells; and the last-named naturalist communicated a most admirable paper on