182 Mr. H. J. Carter on 



membrano-tubular-labyriiitliic structure (see Brady's illustra- 

 tion, l. c. pi. Ixxix. figs. 1-3), remnants of wliicli can, I think, 

 be faintly seen in the more confused substance of SioUczkiella 

 TheohahU, but not in Millarella cantahrifjiensts, where the 

 brown substance alone re])resents the form toithout any wall. 

 But larger fragments of foraminiferous tests in the two former 

 and longer sponge-spicules than the diameter of the sarcodic 

 divisions in the latter exist as in sponge-tissue after it has 

 become hardened \ so that one might infer that when they 

 were taken in this tissue was in a plastic amceboicl state. 

 And therefore all that I can conjecture of the nature of the 

 animal substance of the Loftusiid^ is that it was a solid 

 plasma, like that of the JEtludium, which, during its actice 

 state, is capable of assuming every form, massive and reticulate, 

 that can be conceived, at the same time that it can and does 

 take in any particles of foreign material that suit its purpose ; 

 while, like the other Myxoniycetes which present apparently 

 the same simple protoplasmic substance during their active 

 life, each protoplasm is destined to end in the specific form 

 which it was intended to develop. 



Parkeria, Carp., 1869. 



"With reference to Parheria I would only add, after the 

 excellent paper written by Prof. H. A. Nicholson on this 

 fossil (' Annals,' Jan. 1888, p. 1 &c.), that as there appears 

 to be more than one British species and Prof. Martin Duncan 

 in his Memoir makes of those from the Karakoram Pass 

 which he examined several species and two genera (' Scien- 

 tific Results of the Second Yarkand Mi-sion,' Calcutta, 1879, 

 p. 10), it seems to me, as with Loftusia ijersica of Brady, 

 1879, desirable that it should have a family name, for which 

 1 would propose " Parkeriida^," w hich, being but a patronymic 

 of Carpenter's ^''Parkeria,'" established for that species and 

 genus in 1869, when he published his beautithlly illustrated 

 description of til is fossil in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' 

 (vol. clix. p. 721), should take precedence of Duncan's 

 " Syringosphffiridaj " of 1879 (that is ten years after), esta- 

 blisiied tor the '• Karakoram Stones," which we now know to 

 be Parkeria; J not only irom what Prof. Nicholson has stated 

 from ocular demonstration ('Annals,' I. c. p. 11), but from 

 what I have learned from an examination of the five speci- 

 mens of these '• Stones " mentioned at the commencement of 

 this paper, some of which are identical with Prof. Duncan's 

 representations. 



1 cannot agree with Prof. Nicholson in his statement that 



