726 ” ‘NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
WALDHEIMIA SEPTIGERA AND TEREBRATELLA SEPTATA IDENTICAL. 
To:the Editors of the American Naturalist. Sirs :— Having in the 
course of a too short visit to North America been honored by re- 
markable kindness and attention on the part of my brother natu- 
ralists in this great hemisphere, I am rather disappointed at 
seeing in your excellent periodical a notice of the report submitted 
to the Royal Society of London by my colleagues and myself on 
the deep-sea exploration of parts of the North Atlantic, in H. M. S. 
Porcupine, during the summer of 1869. The writer of that notice, 
Mr. W. H. Dall, criticises in what I cannot help considering over- 
severe terms my views “‘ in regard of the specific and generic lim- 
its of animals ;” and he gives as an instance, Waldheimia septigera 
-and Terebratella septata, which he states belongs to different gen- 
era, although I have included both under the same specific name. 
I do not agree with Mr. Dall in his statement. Having had op- 
portunities of examining the types or original specimens of Tere- 
bratula septigera Lovén, at Stockholm, and of Terebratula septata 
(Philippi), at Berlin, and having carefully compared these speci- 
mens with the published descriptions and figures, I am convinced 
that both belong not only to the same genus, but to the same spe- 
cies. What seems to have been in the mind of Mr. Dall when he 
penned his hasty critique, was that Professor Seguenza of Messina 
had referred a species of Terebratella from the Sicilian tertiaries to 
Philippi’s species, and a species of Terebratula found in the same 
formation to Lovén’s species. The former may be the Terebratella 
Marie of Mr. Arthur Adams from the J apanese seas; the latter 
I have ascertained to be rather widely distributed in the North 
Atlantic. I have the honor to be, Sirs, your very obedient servant, 
Gwyn Jerrreys, Montreal, Oct. 6, 1871. 
Arrinitres or Coccoriras AND or Sponces. — Mr. H. J. Carter 
has enunciated the theory that the coccoliths and coccospheres 
which are found in deep-sea mud, and have recently been identified 
as a constituent of some very ancient geological strata, are not, 
as held by Prof. Huxley, lowly formed animal organisms, but are 
of vegetable origin. This theory will, the writer considers, ex- 
plain the apparent anomaly of the presence in deep seas of a large 
amount of animal life without vegetable organisms for their sub- 
sistence. To the sahe magazine in which this theory is pro- 
pounded, the “ Annals and Magazine of Natural History,” the 
