318 Miscellaneous. 
‘Macmillan’s Magazine,’ attention is directed to certain minute 
bodies to which he gave the name of “ coccoliths,” as met with in 
soundings obtained in 1857 by Capt. Dagman in H.MLS. *‘ Cyclops.’ 
Speaking of these bodies, the author says, ‘ Dr. Wallich verified 
my observation and added the interesting discovery that not unfre- 
quently bodies similar to these coccoliths were aggregated together 
into spheroids, which he termed coccospheres.” He goes on to say 
that ‘ A few years ago Mr. Sorby, in making a careful examination 
of the chalk, by means of sections and otherwise, observed, as 
Ehrenberg had done before him, that much of the granular basis 
possesses a definite form. Comparing these formed particles with 
those in the Atlantic soundings he found the two to be identical, and 
thus proved that the chalk, like the soundings, contains these 
mysterious coccoliths and coccospheres.” 
In the above extract I will, with your permission, point out one 
or two inaccuracies, no doubt unintentional on Prof. Huxley’s part, 
but of sufficient importance to induce me to beg you will afford me 
the opportunity of correcting them, and at the same time of drawing 
the attention of naturalists to some additional facts connected with 
the bodies in question. 
The occurrence of the spheroidal objects to which I assigned the 
name of coccospheres, as being most intimately connected with the 
coccoliths of Prof. Huxley, was detected by me in North Atlantic 
soundings, whilst on the surveying cruise of H.M.S ‘ Bulldog,’ in 
July 1860, a general notice of their existence having appeared in 
my ‘ Notes on the Presence of Animal Life at great Depths in the 
Sea’ in November of the same year, and a detailed description, with 
figures and measurements, having been published by me in the Ann. 
& Mag. Nat. Hist. in July 1861. The identification of the coccoliths 
of the soundings with those of the chalk (to the last of which atten- 
tion was drawn by Ehrenberg and Mr. Sorby) was announced for 
the first time in the two papers just referred to, Mr. Sorby’s paper 
having appeared in the ‘ Annals’ in September 1861. In this 
paper Mr. Sorby actually refers to the spheroidal bodies under the 
name I gave them. The merit of the identification spoken of by 
Prof. Huxley, such as it is, | have therefore a right to claim as 
mine. 
The coccoliths, however, cannot correctly be said to be ‘“ aggre- 
gated together into the spheroids,” as stated in the lecture. They 
are in reality arranged, at intervals, over the surface of the sphe- 
roidal cell, on which their concave surfaces rest, and which is, to this 
extent, a separate portion of the structure. When detached, as 
they invariably appear to be in the chalk and the fossil earths (of 
which I shall have occasion to say a word presently), they bear the 
same relation to the supporting cell that the fallen fruit bears to the 
tree that bore it, and nothing more. 
Of their true position in the organic world I am ignorant. But I 
have these important facts to add (referred to by me incidentally in 
a paper on “The Polycystina,’’ which was read before the Royal 
Microscopical Society in May 1865, and published in the Transac- 
