318 Miscellaneous. 



* MacmiUan'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.M.S. ' Cyclops.' 

 Speaking of these bodies, the author says, '* Dr. WaUich 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 lie 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 sufiicient 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, I 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- 



