104 



Rare Species of Fossil Shell. 



is unique. Mr. Mantell (that indefatigable investigator into 

 the treasures of the chalk, whose museum at Brighton con- 

 tains one of the finest collections from that stratum in the 

 kingdom) found some fragments of the upper chamber of a 

 similar shell from the same locality, which he has named in his 

 Geology of the South-East of England (8vo. edition, p. 130.) 

 Hippurites Morton/. I am,however, inclined to doubt whether 

 it is a hippurite at all, believing it to be rather a gigantic 

 species of barnacle ; and in this opinion I am borne out by the 

 testimony of the able president of the Geological Society, Mr. 

 Lyell, whose Principles of Geology will always entitle him to 

 the best thanks of every admirer of this most interesting 

 branch of natural science. Mr. Lyell, to whom I sent this 

 specimen with an intimation of my doubts of its being a hip- 

 purite, states in his answer, " You are quite right in supposing 

 that your fossil is not a hippurite, but of the i?alanus family : 

 it belongs to Leach's genus C6nia, a balanus with four, in- 

 stead of six, divisions or plates ; so we have no hippurite from 

 the chalk. It is, however, a beautiful specimen as a Conia ; 

 and no fossil Coniae were known before, as far as I can learn." 

 I have lately heard that similar specimens have been discovered 

 in the chalk, since mine, but I have not seen any one. I 

 should, therefore, feel obliged to any of the contributors to 

 your Magazine, if they would inform you, whether they have 

 found any similar fossil, and, if so, whether their specimens 

 differ from this ; by which means we may be enabled to class 

 this properly. My specimen is as nearly of the size of the 



