R. T. Hill — Comanche Series of the Texas Cretaceous. 65 



scientific centers of the east, all of whom pronounced them an 

 undertermined species of the genus Groniolina, of D'Orbigny, 

 but as to where the genus belonged in the animal or vegetable 

 kingdom, no one felt positive as attested by the following let- 

 ter from a gentleman who is considered one of our ablest con- 

 chologists. 



" The fossil you send belongs to a group which has puzzled 

 paleontologists for many years, and has been referred to al- 

 most every obscure group of paleozoology and botany. They 

 were named Goniolina by Orbigny, who put them among the 

 Foraminifera. Dr. White has shown me a French publication 

 by Dumortier in which a Jurassic species is referred to the 

 Crinoidea • Zittel says that Saporta has decided that they are 

 the fruit of Pandanus or " screw pine." My own opinion is 

 that they axe fruit of some kind, and Sapor ta's reference is the 

 the most likely to be correct. Yours should be Lower Cre- 

 taceous." 



The above letter indicates a remarkable diversity of opinion. 

 But I think a brief examination of its place and mode of oc- 

 currence will remove this species at least from any suspicion 

 of being the fruit of land vegetation. It begins in the Colo- 

 rado river section at the first (lowest) fossiliferous horizon in 

 the basal Fredericksburg bed above the Trinity sands, and 

 ranges upward through 450 feet of sediments into the base of 

 the Comanche Peak chalk. There beds in which it occurs are 

 pulverulent chalks and all comparatively deep sea deposits. 

 In the lowest there are slight traces of finest comminuted 

 sand ; in the upper, there are no sands or clays, but the strata 

 are all chalky and magnesian. In none of the beds are there 

 lignites, or other traces of land debris, which would probably 

 be the fact if the Goniolina were vegetable, while the molluscan 

 associates of the form are all off-shore species, such as Mono- 

 pleura, Toxastes, Tylostoma and many other forms. At the 

 horizon of its chief occurrence it is associated with a chalk com- 

 posed almost entirely of a large foraminifer which Roemer 

 named Orbitolina Texana* and which Meekf later referred to 

 the genus Tinoporus. 



Zittel;}: refers the genus to the family Cornuspiridse of the 

 Foraminiferse and says that it is a Jurassic genus. 



Its occurrence in the medial third of the Comanche series — 

 the first noted in America — is of interest, and I shall be glad 

 to furnish specimens to any who desire them. 



Austin, Texas, March 5, 1890. 



* Kreidebildungen von Texas, F. Roemer. 



f Check List of Invertebrate Fossils of North America, p. 1. 



JHandbuch der Paleoutologie, pp. 75, 110, 728. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Third Series, Vol. XL, No. 235.— July, 1890. 

 5 



