ON THE 



VENTRICULIM OF THE CHALK, 



ALMOST one hundred years have now elapsed since Guettard 

 drew attention to " some fossil bodies little known," the eluci- 

 dation of which he attempted in an elaborate paper*. Of the 

 two classes of bodies described by him it is clear that the 

 Choanites are one. The figures and descriptions appear con- 

 clusive on this point, and the true affinities are very shrewdly 

 pointed out by the writer, while the prevailing notion of the 

 bodies described being petrified figs and other fruits is com- 

 pletely disposed of. It may not perhaps be quite so clear that 

 the other class of fossil bodies described by Guettard comprises 

 some of the forms of the Ventriculidse. The true characters of 

 the Ventriculidse will be presently seen to be in almost all cases so 

 obscured from the general observer, and even, without careful at- 

 tention to the mode of observation, from the experienced palaeon- 

 tologist, that we cannot expect to find in either the figures or de- 

 scription of a century ago positive evidence of identity. Still I 

 think those of Guettard warrant the conclusion that objects of 

 this class were before him. 



It was not till Dr. Mantell in 1814 figured and described in 

 the ' Linnsean Transactions/ vol. xi. p. 401, " a fossil Alcyonium 

 from near Lewes," that any particular attention appears to have 

 been given in this country, or, since the time of Guettard, in any 

 other, to these bodies. That paper was but one among the many 



* Mem. de PAcad. Royale de Sciences for 1751. The paper is erro- 

 neously cited by Parkinson under the year 1757. I have found no other 

 direct notice of it. Michelin, in his ' Iconographie Zoophytologique,' p. 121, 

 cites M. Guettard's ' Memoires Academiques.' I have been unable to ob- 

 tain that work, but conceive it to be merely a reprint of M. Guettard's va- 

 rious scientific papers, including the one above named. 



