694 Transactions of (he Society. 



and that it has tempted students of the family to separate its 

 eccentricities under varietal names. In the year L889 Mr. Edward 

 Halkyard, F.B.M.S., thus differentiated a variety having strongly 

 marked transverse stria?, which he described and figured under the 

 name Sigmoilina secans var. obliquistriata* It is true that in 

 1891 he reconsidered the advisability of so distinguishing it, and 

 abandoned the varietal name.f In the year 18f>(>, Costa proposed 

 the specific name denticvlata for specimens the outer periphery of 

 which was more or less strongly earinated, or keeled, the carination 

 being scalloped into points almost as pronounced as those of Cristel- 

 laria calcar, or those that are characteristic of the early stages of 

 Polystomella crispa.% 



Earland found Costa's variety in the shore-sands of Bognor, 

 Sussex, and figured it in the paper already referred to, and in the 

 same sands he found, and in the same paper recorded, a striking 

 and very recurrent variety distinguished by fine hair lines, or 

 striae, running closely together, parallel to the long axis of the 

 outer chamberlets of the shell. To this variety he gave the name 

 fenuistriata. 



In March of this year (1910) a large tract of the shore of 

 Selsey Bill was strewn half an inch thick with a pure deposit 

 of foraminiferal shells, the vast majority of which were those of 

 Massilina secans. We have devoted a great many hours to the 

 examination of this deposit, and have found in it almost every 

 eccentricity and monstrosity of form of which the genus Miliolina 

 is capable (which is saying a good deal), but we never found any 

 sign of the three varieties which we have just described. Exhibited 

 upon the table are two slides, one containing peculiarities of 

 form or marking, together with Miliolids other than Massilina 

 secans, and the other containing absolute monstrosities from this 

 deposit of last March. In April, however, we made an expedition 

 to the Mixon Eeef and Beacon, some two miles out at sea from 

 the point of Selsey Bill, and made a gathering of mud and sand 

 from the algae adherent to the rocks, with a view to studying 

 the life-history of the common British Foraminifera, and this 

 gathering is still under observation. Some of the results of those 

 observations, regarding Massilina secans and Polystomella crispa, 

 have already been published elsewhere ; § the further results we 

 hope to place before this Society at an early date. The gathering was 

 stored in narrow observation-tanks, and is continually examined by 

 means of a Zeiss- Greenhow binocular Microscope, constructed for us 



* E. Halkyard, Recent Foraminifera of Jersey. Trans, and Ann. Rep. Man- 

 chester Micr. Soc, 1889, p. 61, pi. I. fig. 7. 



t E. Halkyard, A Comparative List of the Recent Foraminifera of the Islands 

 of Guernsey, Hern, and Jersey. Trans, and Ann. Rep. Manchester Micr. Soc, 

 1891, p. 



X Qubiqueloculina denticulata Costa, 1856, Atti Acad. Pontaniana, vii. fasc. 2, 

 p. 325, pi. xxv. fig. 6 a, b, c. § Knowledge, loc. cit. 



