24 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Comparing this description with that given above of Parop- 

 sonema, one must concede that the basal plan of structure is in 

 both cases the same, as far as one can judge at present. 



Doctor Fuchs adds : 



Should my view prove the truth, then herewith, as far as I know, 

 the existence of fossil siphonophores related to Porpita has been 

 demonstrated for the first time. 



Since these two papers were published, several new specimens 

 have reached the State Museum. Two of these exhibit features not 

 seen in the earlier collections and have an interesting bearing on 

 the probable taxonomic position of Paropsonema. The smaller 

 (see pi. I, fig. 8) was obtained by Mr D. D. Luther at the same 

 horizon as the other specimens, but farther west, on West hill near 

 Naples ; the larger one, which retains the surface sculpture more 

 perfectly than any other yet collected, was found by one of the 

 students of Professor Chadwick in the Portage beds of Johnson's 

 glen, Canandaigua lake, N. Y., which is several miles to the north 

 of the original locality of the fossil. 



The characters worthy of description are the following: While 

 the earlier specimens were flat disks, the two specimens here figured, 

 as well as a third large specimen not figured, present the first cycle 

 as a more or less prominent ring, in the third specimen even as a 

 spherical segment. The central circular area is depressed and in 

 the smallest specimen it is broken out, while the first cycle of radial 

 bands is faintly present and flattened on one side, on the opposite 

 (upper side in the, drawing) the outer layer is broken away and 

 below it club-shaped, outwardly widening welts are seen, which 

 are separated by narrow depressions. In the larger specimen also 

 the rays of the second and third cycles appear as broad welts upon 

 the disk, which can be broken off and then display impressions of 

 the concentric lines corresponding to those on the upper side of the 

 rays and interrupted by the smooth bands. 



It seems to us that one has to infer from the appearance of the 

 projecting cycles of rays that they may well have been air chambers, 

 that in the flat specimens they were emptied or collapsed before 

 entombment, while in these three they became filled with sediment. 

 In the smaller specimen we probably see an interior cast of the 

 first cycle of chambers, with the original partitions indicated by the 

 flat interspaces and narrow furrows. In the second and third cycles 

 the rays in the larger specimen appear now as separate bodies and 

 from the presence of the concentric lines on their undersides it 



