158 
THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
The name Miliolina or Quinqueloculina seminulum is one that lias been almost 
universally adopted by English authors for the typical smooth-shelled Miliola with five 
visible segments. As a specific term, however, it has not met with the same acceptance 
amongst Continental rhizopodists. Though included by d’Orbigny in his first list of 
species, it never reappears in his subsequent works, nor, so far as I am aware, is the name 
ever employed in the memoirs of Reuss, Costa, Bornemann, Karrer, Giimbel, Stache, 
or Hantken. The reason may possibly lie in the fact that the description given by 
Linne, and the figures referred to in the works of the earlier naturalists, included too 
great a variety of forms to suit d’Orbigny’s method of species-making ; and succeeding 
authors found it easier to follow d’Orbigny, or to invent new names for trivial modi- 
fications not figured by him, than to trouble themselves about the comparative value of 
minor characters, or about precedence in nomenclature. 
The following is the notice of the species in the 12th edition of the Systema 
Naturae, 1767, vol. i. p. 1264 : — 
“ Serpula seminulum — 791. S. testa regulari ovali libera glabra. 
“ Plane, conch., t. ii. f . 1 ? 
“ Gault, test., t. x. f. s. 
“ Habitat in M. Adriatico ; minuta. Testa recidit a congeneribus quod libera fit nec 
aclhsereat aliis corporibus, quamvis anfractus inter se uniti, et quod apertura in mea non 
conspicua.” 
In the 13th (Gmelin’s) edition, 1788, some further particulars are supplied, together 
with additional references, namely, to a figure in Martini’s Conchylien-Cabinet, 1769, 
vol. i. pi. iii. fig. 22, a.b, and to a description in Fabricius’s Fauna Groenlandise, 
p. 376, No. 370. 
The annexed woodcuts are accurate copies of the drawings referred to in the later 
edition. 
Fig. 2. — Serpula seminulum, Linne. 
A, B, C. Copied from the figure in Plancus, — De Conch, min. not., pi. ii. fig. 1. 
s. From Gaultieri, — Index Testarum, pi. x. fig. s. 
a, b. From Martini, — Conchyl.-Cab., vol. i. pi. iii. fig. 22. 
There is sufficient evidence that many of the earlier authors recognised, to some 
extent at least, the extreme variability of foraminiferal shells, and the Linnean name, as 
applied to a series of this sort, has in reality better right of precedence than if it had 
