252 SELECTED NOTES FROM 



distance, and goes at a good pace, which seems quite incom- 

 patible with the effects of a mere leap. A salmon is undoubtedly 

 a very active fish, but his leap, which will take him up a fall, 

 would not carry him far along the surface, were he furnished with 

 ever-so-well-made a " parachute." I have watched Flying-Fish for 

 hours getting up by twos and threes before the bows of a ship in 

 certain latitudes where they abound, and a pretty sight it is. The 

 pectoral fins are extremely long in proportion to the body — about 

 four-fifths of its whole length — and are moved by very strong 

 muscles. Cuvier says that the flexors which move the fins do not 

 act differently from those of other fishes, excepting that they 

 move more freely. The fish from which this slide was taken flew 

 on board a ship with which I am acquainted. R. A, Hankey. 



Foraminifera from March.—" Post-glacial sands, March, Cam- 

 bridgeshire," a most interesting object, as exhibiting Foraminifera 

 of species still existent, the shells being as perfect as those 

 gathered to-day, although " as old as the hills." The slide con- 

 tains at least twenty distinct species of Foraminifera. The 

 species are, in some instances, difficult to determine, partly on 

 account of the shells being loose in the cell, and being thereby 

 rendered difficult to put in position, so as to see accurately the 

 various points desirable to be examined in detail. 



The Textularia look as if " rough-cast " — somewhat like the 

 Arenaceous division of the Foraminifera, although strictly 

 belonging to the Hyaline, or glassy — to which family the Lagena 

 group belongs. The Porcellanous division is represented by 

 Cornuspira, Biloculina, TrilocuUna, and Quinquloculina. Thus, 

 this slide contains representations of two of the three great divi- 

 sions of the Foraminifera. 



The I^orce/Ianous division is "imperforate" — i.e., the shell is 

 not (usually) pierced all over with minute perforations, but only at 

 the mouth or septum. 



The Hyaline division has the shell perforated all over, more or 

 less. In some species {^Operculina and Cydodyphiis) these perfo- 

 rations are about one-ten-thousandth of an inch in diameter; 

 while in Rotalia they are about one-three-thousandth of an inch. 

 These perforations may be distinctly seen on some of the speci- 

 mens in the slide. 



There is no proper representative of the Arenaceous division. 

 Almost everyone of these shells is described and figured in Wil- 

 liamson's Recent Foraminifera of Great Britain (Ray Society) and 

 others, in the Philosophical Transactions for 1865, in a paper on 

 the Foraminifera of the North Atlantic by Jones and Parker. 



The slide also contains three or foui .'■''^ecies of Ostracoda and 

 fragments of Echinus spines. :ijd 



