MARSHALL : ON SOME NEW BRITISH SHELLS. 1 87 



what your shell is, but how it got where it was found. . . . 

 The specimen does not look like a fossil washed out of the 

 cliff." 



At my suggestion Mr. Dodd then sent it to the Rev. Boog 

 Watson in a registered letter, whence, owing to a wrong address, 

 it was returned in a fragmentary condition, having been opened 

 by the Post Office officials and tampered with. They had 

 removed it from the card on which it was mounted, broken it 

 in pieces, and marked on the outside " No Value " ! On a 

 close examination of the interior of the box, however, nearly 

 the whole of the lower valve was found intact, and this was 

 sent to the Rev. Boog Watson, for his opinion, who replied : — 



" I regret to see that a previous difficulty about the address 

 has resulted in sore damage. Of course, from such a fragment 

 not much can be made out. Mr. Smith's suggestion was a 

 happy shot, but I have no doubt it is not Terebratula tuberata. 

 The ribs in your shell are much wider apart, the hollows much 

 deeper, and the concentric cross bars very much finer and more 

 irregular. That I infer from his figure, for if I have ever seen 

 his species I have certainly nothing but the vaguest impression 

 of it. The Jurassic Rhynconella spinosa, Schlot, presents some 

 interesting points of resemblance in the spines. In regard to 

 the place of origin of the shell, I may mention, as bearing on the 

 improbabilities of a deep-sea brachiopod turning up on our 

 coasts, that I once dredged a single worn valve of a deep-water 

 Brazilian brachiopod at Madeira." 



Finally, Mr. Wilson, curator of the Bristol Museum, who 

 knows the coast of Lincolnshire well, stated that "he could not 

 accept the ballast theory, as Skegness is not a place where 

 ballast is discharged, and the chances must be enormously 

 against the tiny shell being an exotic." 



The fragments were then returned to me, and I was 

 endeavouring to make a drawing of the perfect shell from the 

 fragments, when a note from Mr. Dodd announced the dis- 

 covery by him of another perfect specimen, — this time from 



