421 
Warminster Sponges were known as Siphonia, Hallirhoa and 
Polypothecia, as may be seen on several specimens before you 
in Mr. Lonsdale’s clear handwriting ; while the Faringdon series 
appear as Manon, Scyphia and Tragos in the works of Mantell 
and his successors Lyell, Phillips, Page, Woodward and Owen. 
Fromentel, to whom I submitted specimens of typical Faringdon 
sponges on a visit to him at Gray in the Haute Saone, introduced 
the names of Siphonoccelia, Disccelia, Oculospongia and Elas- 
moiera, and they were accepted by the veteran Swiss geologist, 
de Loriol, whose personal acquaintance I am proud to have made 
at Geneva last May, and from whom I have since received many 
letters. But all the old familiar names have in late years been 
declared “obsolete” by Dr. Hinde, of the British Museum, 
and the new nomenclature includes such hard compounds as 
Holodictyon, Nematinion, Pachytilodia, Pachypoterion, Sclero- 
kalia and Trachysycon, which I leave to a younger generation 
to digest and assimilate. (See Jukes-Browne, Cretac. Rocks, 
247-8.) 
If you ask me how it is that fossil sponges are found in such 
abundance in certain spots while totally absent in others, I reply 
that precisely the same phenomenon occurs with living species. 
They have a tendency to grow in dense patches or “sponge- 
fields,” while intervening spaces show no trace of them. (Cret. 
Rocks, 418.) 
It remains for me to say a few words about the Echinites of 
the two formations. Taking the U. G. S. first, I find from the 
reports of the Paleontographical Society distributed through 
8 volumes between the years 1862 and 18582 that the Wiltshire 
beds have yielded 14 species, ro of which are represented in our 
~ Museum. In the time of Dr. Wright, to whose Monographs we 
are indebted for descriptions of all the Cretaceous Urchins, there 
were six species found in abundance at the familiar Chute farm, 
- Discoidea, Cottaldia, Holaster, Echinocyphus and two Pseudo- 
diademas. You have on the table 30 specimens of the small 
