﻿21G Canadian Record of Science. 



of much more recent date. Xor could tliey witli proba- 

 bility be referred to sponges, as they were composed of 

 solid calcareous plates which, as was evident from their 

 texture, could not have been spicular, and which, it 

 appeared, must have been composed of ordinary calcite 

 and not of aragonite. One seemed thus shut up to the 

 idea of their being foraminiferal, and if so very large and 

 complex forms of that group, consisting of perforated 

 chambers arranged around a central funnel and occasionally 

 subdivided by thinner curved lanellae. I mentioned them 

 in this connection in the- "Dawn of Life" in 1875, not as 

 closely related to Eozoon, but as apparently showing the 

 existence of very large foraminifera in the Lowest Cambrian. 

 The specimens thus noticed were those named A. j^ro- 

 fundiis by Billings, and were from the Lower Cambrian. 

 He had, howeA'er, referred to the same genus silicified 

 specimens from the Calciferous or L^pper Cambrian, which 

 were subsequently found to be associated with spicules 

 like those of lithistid sponges, and which may have been 

 very different from the species of the Lower Cambrian, 

 and are now indeed placed in a different genus. The 

 subject became in this way involved in some confusion, 

 and the genus of Billings was supposed by some to be 

 referable to corals and by others to sponges. I, therefore, 

 asked my friend Dr. Hinde to re-examine my specimens, 

 and at the same time Mr. Billings placed in his hands 

 examples of the later form, and he also obtained specimens 

 from European localities which agreed substantially with 

 the older of the Labrador specimens, and w^ere from the 

 same ancient horizon. Hinde retains the original and 

 older type from Labrador in ArchcBocyathus,^ and places 

 the later form, A. miitganensis of Billings, in a new genus 

 Archa^oscyphia. In this Walcott, in his memoir on the 

 Lower Cambrian fauna, substantially agrees with Hinde. 

 Hinde, however, rejects my foraminiferal suggestion, and 



1 Journal Geol. Society of Loudon, Vol. 45, 1889, pp. 125, et seqxi. 



