NOTES ON RETICULARIAN RHIZOPODA. 269 



have, in fact^ added little or nothing to our knowledge of the 

 Nummulinida, except in so far as concerns their geographical 

 and bathymetrical distribution. 



Lagenida. 



Amongst the Larjenida it is far otherwise. The genus 

 Lagena alone, as represented in these collections, supplies 

 material for five or six crowded quarto plates, its varieties 

 embracing modifications of contour and of surface decoration 

 of which little was previously known. Of these it is im- 

 possible to speak with any advantage in the absence of 

 figures. It has been generally understood lieretofore that 

 the central home of the Lagena was in water of 100 to t200 

 fathoms, but some of the most beautiful and delicate mem- 

 bers of the genus have been found at depths of i^OOO to 3000 

 fathoms, and even in the black mud of almost the deepest 

 of the ocean abysses hitherto explored by the dredge ; and 

 in some of these localities the variety of the forms which have 

 been met with has been scarcely less remarkable than their 

 individual beauty. 



Amongst the Nodosarine types furnished by the " Chal- 

 lenger " dredgings the most noteworthy is the genus Frondi- 

 cularia, which, with its subordinate Plabelline modifications, 

 must now take a definite position in the category of recent 

 genera. D'Orbigny, in his 'Tableau Methodique,' 1826, 

 mentions " the Adriatic " as the habitat of Frondicidaria 

 alata and Fr. rhomhoidalis, but it has been supposed by 

 subsequent observers that his specimens were inter- 

 lopers which had been Avashed out of one or other of the 

 fossiliferous Tertiary clays that abound in the Italian Penin- 

 sula. Messrs. Parker and Jones,^ however, found the closely 

 allied Fr. complcmata in dredgings made by the late Mr. 

 Lucas Barrett off the coast of Jamaica (100 to 200 fathoms), 

 and as I have since identified the same species in beauti- 

 fully fresh-looking specimens collected by my friend Dr. 

 Tiberi, of Portici, on the coast of Sicily, it may be allowed 

 that d^'Orbigny's habitat is probably correct. My friend M. 

 Ernest Vanden Broeck " reports the occurrence of varieties 

 of both Fr. complanata and Fr. alata in one of the soundings 

 made by the late Professor Agassiz off Barbadoes, in 100 

 fathoms. This completes the record, so far as I knov/, of 

 observations upon recent Frondiculari<2 , and it is confined, 



1 ' Report Brit. Assoc.,' 1863. Traus. sections, pp. 80 and 105. 

 - 'Ann. Soc. Beige de Micros.,' vol. ii, p. 109, pi. 2, figs. 12 — 14, and 

 pi. 3, fig. 2. 



