116 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
the sac-like stage described. It is not intended to assert here 
positively that Receptaculites is a sponge, or to determine the 
question of its zoological rank one way or the other.” ‘‘ On the 
whole,” .remarks Sir Wm. Dawson, ‘if not Foraminifera they 
must have been organisms intermediate between these and 
Sponges.” The claim put forth regarding their alliance to the 
modern purple organ pipe coral (Tubipora Musica) scarcely calls for 
serious refutation. For my own part, I think we may leave 
such controversial things to the final determination of the 
specialist. Though we may expect no satisfactory result as likely 
to be reached even in the next century, this circumstance need not 
prevent us from placing in their hands every well preserved specimen 
which may throw additional light on organisms whose nature can’ 
alone be determined in the study or cabinet of the palzentologist. 
But while I accord the higher rank to the man who can both name 
and classify, (university honor men, generally), I think the explorer 
or discoverer who brings, for the first time, to light some new species 
or genera, should obtain a little more credit than he usually 
receives. Not long since, in discussing the nature of these beautiful 
fossils with a friend of mine, (you may notice a restored form by 
Billings in Sir Wm. Dawson’s “‘ Dawn of Life”), I mentioned that I 
had obtained a fragment of the inner surface of an Ectorhin in the 
Niagara here. He evidently considered I must have been mistaken, 
as United States paleontologists alleged its range was limited to the 
Silurian Cambrian deposits. I pointed out that we had in our Museum 
several specimens presented to us by Professor Bell, from rocks of 
the North-West, of undoubted Wenlock or Niagara age. They 
had also been found in the same series in Australia, and from 
the circumstances of their frequently occurring in the drift beds of 
Western Ontario, especially between Stratford and St. Mary’s, in the 
shape of the inner surface of an Ectorhin, I would not be at all 
surprised to find that Receptaculites may yet be found, well up in 
the Devonians of Ontario. (R. Neptune has already been 
recognized in this formation in Belgium). I willingly admit erratic 
boulders, shingle and gravel may be derived from beds of any age, 
but the Glacial Drift is chiefly local. I mean by this term, in “a 
Corniferous district” For instance, you may remark the moved, 
rounded debris has been torn from rocks in the immediate neighbor- 
hood, so, where mountain limestone prevails, (as in parts of Ireland), 
