276 NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 



1. There are errors and omissions from want of study of tlie fossil 

 in situ, and from want of acc[uaintance with its various states of 

 preservation. 



2. He confounds the finely tubulated proper wall of Eozoon with 

 the chrysotile veins traversing many of the specimens and obviously 

 more recent than the bodies whose fissures they fill. 



3. In regard to the canal system, he thinks that the round and 

 regularly branching forms which he figures, and which nearly resemble 

 the similar parts of modern Foraminifera, are rather exceptional, which 

 is a mistake. 



4. A fatal defect in his mode of treatment is that he regards each 

 of the structures separately, and does not sufficiently consider their 

 cumulative force when taken together. 



Reticularian Rhizopoda. — Mr. H. B. Brady, F.R.S., in notes on 

 some of the Reticularian Rhizopoda of the ' Challenger' Expedition,* re- 

 ferring to Carpenter, Parker, and Jones's ' Introduction to the Study 

 of the Foraminifera,' the work of Professor Reuss, and the more recent 

 suggestions of Professor Zittel and Professor T. Rupert Jones, as to 

 classification, says that it is not altogether satisfactory to have to 

 depend solely upon the structure and conformation of the external 

 skeleton or test for distinctive characters. There can scarcely be a 

 doubt that the sarcode bodies of animals varying so much in their 

 features must have important differences. The researches of R. Hert- 

 wig on the animal of Miliola and Iiotalia,'\ and those of F. E. Schulze ;}: 

 on Polystomella and Lagena, permit no longer the belief that the 

 Reticularian Rhizopoda consist of mere masses of undifferentiated 

 protoplasm, and a wide field of investigation is thereby opened, in 

 which the employment of chemical reagents, in conjunction with the 

 higher powers of the Microscope, may be expected to yield a harvest 

 of hitherto unnoted facts. But for these methods of research the 

 fresh, if not the living animal must be used ; material long preserved 

 in alcohol, as the ' Challenger ' dredgings have necessarily been, fur- 

 nishes only the knowledge derivable from the harder tissues, and the 

 portions rendered permanent by inorganic constituents. 



Protozoa of Northern Russia. — An elaborate paper on this 

 subject, illustrated by two plates, by C. von Mereschkowsky, § gives 

 the results, as far as Protozoa are concerned, of his two journeys to 

 the White Sea, made in the summers of 1876 and 1877. 



1. Proposed new Family. — Mereschkowsky proposes to form into 

 the new family JJvellina those colonial monads the individuals of 

 which are provided with one or more cilia, are devoid of a lorica, but 

 sometimes enclosed in a common gelatinous investment, are not 

 united into a branched colony, but form more or less spherical masses, 

 and for the most part [Anthophjsa is an exception) are free-swimming. 

 They may, in the author's opinion, be taken as transition forms 



* 'Quart. Journ. Micr. Sci.,' xix. (1879) 24. 

 t ' Jenaisclie Zeitscbrift fiir Natunviss.,' x. 42. 

 X ' Archiv fiir Mikr. Anat.,' xiii. 

 § Ibid., xvi. (1879) 153. 



