238 GEORGE H. GIRTY 



but the genitive case of the same noun, secale, and is even less 

 appropriate than the adjective, besides which there is very Httle 

 precedent, in paleontologic Hterature at all events, for making the 

 species name a common noun in the genitive, although proper 

 nouns in the genitive are not rare. It seems clear that the only 

 acceptable form of this name is secalica. 



The second point which I propose to raise concerns the status 

 of Fusulina secalica Say, Fusulina centralis Say, and Fusulina 

 elongata Shumard of which the first two are retained as valid species 

 in von Staff's monograph, and the last cited as Fusulina extensa 

 var. californica, F. extensa being a manuscript name of Schellwien's 

 and californica a new varietal designation. To be more explicit, 

 Shumard's original description of Fusulina elongata is listed as a 

 doubtful synonym and my later citation, in 1908, as an undoubted 

 synonym of the manuscript species and new variety. Von Staff 

 points out the indubitable fact that Shumard's description is very 

 meager, so that the only important feature of F. elongata given is the 

 great length, in which respect the later specimens described and 

 figured by me are distinctly, though perhaps not greatly, inferior 

 to Shumard's measurement. For this reason Shumard's work is 

 cited with doubt and mine without doubt in the synonymy. Von 

 Staff's treatment of these three species is inconsistent, for if the 

 description of F. elongata is meager it is less meager than that of 

 F. centralis, and if the description of F. elongata assigns a greater 

 length than has actually been found in later collections, that of F. 

 secalica assigns a feature which is quite alien to the whole genus 

 Fusulina, a solid axis. 



In fact, all three species are too poorly described to be deter- 

 minable, and since the typical collections are now lost, it is neces- 

 sary to redefine them in the light of new studies based on other 

 material. The method employed in the case of F. secalica^ and 

 F. elongata^ was to base the later studies on material from about 

 the same locality and horizon as the original, and in this the possi- 

 bihties of satisfactory results depend largely upon whether one 

 or several species are there present. If more than one are present 



' Am. Jour. Sci. XVII (1904), 234. 



' U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper §S, 1908, p. 62. 



