Pote on Glanconome disticha, from the 
Bala Beds of Glun Ceiring. 
BY GEORGE W. SHRUBSOLE. 
Read February 1st, 1883. 
MONG the many interesting forms of life in the Bala beds, 
which stretch across the valley of Glyn Ceiriog, few 
exceed in interest the Polyzoan, hitherto known as Glauconome 
disticha, in whatever light we regard it, whether as the earliest 
member of a large and important family, or as the representa- 
tive of a class which now for the first time, so far as is yet 
known, makes its appearance, and at the onset presents a 
robustness of character and a development which are not sur- 
passed by any allied species, during even the Carboniferous 
epoch. 
It is nowhere a common fossil. Even in Glyn Ceiriog, where 
it is perhaps most abundant, a day’s hunting may sometimes 
not yield a single example. In a quarry by the roadside, on 
Cefn-coch, at the back of Glyn Ceiriog, I have found it 
occurring freely, in common with other Polyzoans. 
The appearance of the fossil is striking. It consists of a 
series of straight stems, springing from a common base, and 
intimately bound together by secondary branches, from which 
spring cross-bars, which coalesce with similar bars from the 
opposite branch. The connection of these several leading 
branches forms the whole into a fine frondose expansion. One 
face only of the ccenzecium is covered with a double row of 
circular cell-openings leading to the home of the polypide, 
which consists of a long tapering cylindrical cell, and these 
cells are arranged one over the other in the substance of the 
branch. 
While the appearance of the fossil on the newly-broken 
surface is striking, the minute details of its structure are often 
obscure, for the whole of the calcareous part of the Polyzoan 
has been removed, and an ochreous deposit has taken its place. 
In one of my visits to the Glyn, I was fortunate in finding an 
example, in which the deposit had taken the form and shape of 
the cell. This gave me the means of verifying the correctness 
of the reference of this species to Glauconome. I had long 
had my doubts on the subject. When attention was first called 
to it by Murcuison, McCoy was himself in doubt whether it 
could correctly be referred to the Dudley Glauconome, but 
ends his doubts by saying that it was “impossible to separate 
them specifically.” Still later Mr. ETHERIDGE, Junr., pro- 
posed to assign this Bala species to Ramzpora, a genus founded 
