1894.] ON SOME FORAMINIEERA FROM TRINIDAD. 647 



4. On some Foraminifera from the Microzoic Deposits of 

 Trinidad, West Indies. By R. J. Lechmere Guppy, 

 C.M.Z.S. 



[Received August 27, 1894.] 

 (Plate XLI.) 



§1. Introductory. 



A paper of mine on the Microzoic deposits of Trinidad was read 

 before the Geological Society of London on the 8th June, 1892, and 

 published in the November 1892 part of the Journal of the 

 Society. Subsequently I communicated to a local scientific 

 society of Trinidad a notice on the subject. But in these papers 

 I did not deal with the novelties I had discovered in these rocks. 

 Having been prostrated by a most serious illness I was unable for 

 a long time to follow up the subject ; and when I did so my work 

 progressed but slowly. Hence I am only now in a position to 

 make known some forms which appear to be new, and to bring 

 forward some observations which may possibly throw light on the 

 evolution of certain forms of the Foraminifera. 



The species of Foraminifera have possibly as definite a form as 

 most other species of organic beings. The amount of variation 

 among what are called the higher animals is very great, as is shown 

 by the fact that in some cases a single natural species has been 

 made into a dozen or more by naturalists. We are not always 

 acquainted with the limits of variation of a species, and we are 

 often misled, or surprised and puzzled, by the occasional appearance 

 and partial persistence of an embryonic condition which we do not 

 understand ; for example, the exceptional appearance of a specimen 

 of Frondiculnria or Nodosaria with a Cristellarian commencement. 

 But in what are called the higher animals we are are not unfamiliar 

 with the occurrence or persistence of what are known as embryonic 

 characters. Such characters have thrown most valuable light upon 

 the affinity and course of development of animals and plants. So 

 they will probably do in the case of Foraminifera. 



§ 2. On the Initial Staye of Frondicularia. 



The specimen exhibited (Plate XLI. fig. 7) might, by some rhizo- 

 podists, be called Layena ylohosa. It is in all essential respects 

 similar to the specimens figured under that name by Sherborn and 

 Chapman (Journ. B. Microsc. Soc. 1886, pi. xiv. figs. 11, 12). But 

 my impression is that it is none other than the initial chamber of a 

 Polymorphina. Messrs. Parker and Jones, in a memoir on North- 

 Sea Foraminifera (Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, vol. xix. p. 273, 

 1857), perceived that the primordial segment of Polymorph in a 

 resembled a Lagena 1 . They remark of specimens of this kind 



1 See also the specimens figured by Reus?. ' Lagenidcen,' pi. i. figs. 1-3. The 

 figures of I. globoid in the 'Challenger' Report are true Lugenm, and do not 

 exhibit this form. 



