JONES — FORAMIXIFERA OF THE CHALK. 



293 



history the highly- coloured scenes of a romaunt, nor believe in all 

 the wonderful doings of King Arthur, Sir Tristram, Meliades, and the 

 other heroes of the song-stories of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; 

 but we do know that many of these fable-songs were based on still 

 more ancient legends, and may not these lays be but the embodiments 

 in after ages of primitive traditions of far, far remote events ? 



Through Kent there is a narrow ancient way, now known as the 

 Pilgrims' Road, for along it our first of poets, Chaucer, made his 

 " merrie motley cavalcade" to wend its way to Canterbury. People, in 

 less searching times than these, believed the road went on to Corn- 

 wall, and that along it Phoenician merchants brought their precious 

 tin. Whether one end of this primitive way ever went towards Corn- 

 wall, or whether remnants of that one end may still be found at our 

 British kingdom's end, this deponent saith not ; but he does believe, 

 — it may be but a childish fancy, for we like to deck our childhood's 

 cherished grounds with strange romantic fancies,— that its other end 

 does end upon the Folkestone heights, and that only now because it 

 can go no further, but whence it might have crossed the "narrow sea" 

 before the chalk cliffs there ended it so abruptly. Strange it is to 

 think that primitive men and mammoths might have w r alked along 

 that road. The grass springs up and withers away, and the silent 

 earth telleth no man's history. 



PORAMINIPERA OP THE CHALK. 

 By the Editor. 



The Poraminifera figured in Plate XV. are some of them copied 

 from D'Orbigny's ' Memoir on the Poraminifera of the Chalk near 

 Paris,' and some are from drawings of Cretaceous specimens lent 

 by a friend. The figures do not furnish anything like a perfect or 

 consecutive series of these interesting Microzoa, though some of 

 the most common forms are here depicted, and will well serve the 

 purpose of drawing the attention of our correspondents and readers 

 to the points of interest referred to at p. 234, No. 66. 



Professor Rupert Jones, F.G.S., has obliged me with the follow- 

 ing notes on the figured specimens : — 



Plate XV., Pig. 1, 2. Cristellaria rotulata, Lamarck. 



A common form of Cristellaria Calcar, Linn., sp., having but little keel, and very- 

 variable in this feature, as well as in the curvature and elevation of the septal lines, the 

 convexity of the umbones, and the shape of the aperture, which may be either round or 

 triangular. It is exceedingly abundant both in the fossil and the recent state, the 

 largest specimens are found in strata of late Tertiary age and in the existing seas ; and 

 under its various modifications it has received many different " specific " names. C. rotic- 



