ON TIIK SHETLAND I'ORAMINIFEKA. 441 



and on previous occasions in Shetland inhabiting very deep water and living 

 parasitic upon sponges, thus being of similar habit to that species which has 

 excited so much controversy lately, which lives upon Hyalonema miraUlis. 

 In the open sea to the north of Unst I had the delight of seeing in profusion 

 two lovely oceanic Hydrozoa belonging to the genera Diphyes and Physoplwra. 

 Unfortunately having no works upon the subject with me I was imable to 

 determine the species, but I believe the former to have been D. appendiculata. 

 Diphyes has only once before been observed in British waters, and Physo- 

 2jhora was not known to inhabit them. The rapidity of growth in Diphyes 

 is extraordinary, the coenosarc of a specimen kept alive was developed nearly 

 three inches in a single night. 



These notes are necessarily brief, and I fear may have proved dry and un- 

 interesting to the majority of the members in consequence of that very 

 brevity. My excuse must be that it is much more easy to draw up a report 

 of general interest when little has been done, and the habits and life-history 

 of some particular animals can be dilated upon, than it is so to summarize the 

 discoveries of a successful expedition as to make them in their necessarily 

 condensed form interesting to others than piirely scientific naturalists. 



Report on the Foraminifera obtained in the Shetland Seas. 

 By Edward Waller. 



In making a report of the Foraminifera obtained in the several dredging ex- 

 peditions to the Shetland Islands, undertaken by Mr. Jeffreys and his com- 

 panions from 1861 to the present year (in all of which, except that of 1863, 

 I was a party), it was a matter of immediate importance to consider some of 

 the works recently published on the British Foraminifera, for the purpose of 

 deciding upon the mode of classification, the nomenclature, and the enumera- 

 tion to be adopted in presenting the results of our explorations. 



Mr. Williamson's recent ' Foraminifera of Great Britain,' published by the 

 Hay Society in 1858, illustrated with admirable plates, and containing gene- 

 rally very lucid descriptions, will necessarily be in the hands of aU studying 

 the British F"'oraminifera, and may be taken, -without much change, as afford- 

 ing a fair representation of the then known forms which were sufficiently 

 distinct to be named and figured. 



The beauty of the objects and the information in the book will, doubtless, 

 soon stimulate explorers elsewhere, as they have done on the Scottish and 

 Durham coasts, to make additions to our species. 



The subsequent work of Dr. Carpenter on the study of the Foraminifera, 

 published by the Bay Society in 1862, was based on very extended inquiries 

 into both recent and fossil Foraminifera by himself and Messrs. Parker and 

 Jones, and opened up views of classification which differed very much from 

 previous modes, including Mr. "Williamson's. 



Dr. Carpenter's system has regard more to th construction of the animal 

 inhabitant than to the outline of the shelly covering, and seems at once to 

 have a more natural foundation, and, from certain characters of the shell, 

 suited to the animal construction, to afford a more obvious andacciirate divi- 

 sion of the objects. The new arrangement requires a considerable change in 

 the names of species, &c. 



I propose, therefore, in the appended list to follow the classification and 

 nearly the nomenclature of Dr. Carpenter and his colleagues, and to take Mr. 



