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THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 
chamber may be formed whenever sufficient has collected at one spot to segregate itself 
into a mass of the requisite size. 
Setting aside a number of doubtful specimens, Sorosphcera confusa has been found 
at the following points. In the North Atlantic, south of the Rockall Bank, 630 fathoms ; 
Faroe Channel, 542 fathoms ; off Drobak, Norway (Carpenter) ; off the Azores, 900 
fathoms ; and at one Station in the North Pacific, 2900 fathoms. 
Saccammina, M. Sars. 
Saccammina, M. Sars [1868], Carpenter, Brady, G. O. Sars, Etheridge, Zittel, Young, Rupert 
Jones, Norman, Biitsclili, &c. 
Test free or rarely adherent ; consisting of one or several rounded or fusiform 
chambers with distinct apertures. Polythalamous forms with or without stoloniferous 
connections between the chambers. 
The typical condition of Sciccammina is represented by a single, free, spherical or 
pyriform chamber, with compact arenaceous investment and a simple aperture situated 
in a somewhat produced neck. Recent specimens, as a rule, agree pretty well in all these 
particulars. The association of a number of such chambers in a sort of colony, so long 
as they are only adherent by their exterior surfaces and the individual apertures remain 
distinct, is a comparatively unimportant deviation from the normal state, but more 
noteworthy exceptions are found in the adherent and polythalamous specimens 
occasionally met with in localities where the typical form is abundant, and these will be 
alluded to in a later paragraph. 
In the fossil condition Saccammina is normally, if not invariably, polythalamous ; 
the chambers instead of being globular or pyriform, are, as a rule, more or less fusiform, 
and joined end to end by short stoloniferous tubes ; though the size of the segments 
and the structure of the walls correspond precisely with those of the recent type. 
Prof. Zittel has figured, 1 under the name Saccammina schwageri, a little fossil 
resembling a single segment of the common Carboniferous species, but with reticulated 
exterior. Surface-ornament of any sort is exceedingly rare amongst the arenaceous 
Foraminifera, and unless the figured reticulation is caused by an unusually regular 
arrangement of agglutinated sand-grains, it is difficult to see how the organism can 
belong to the present genus. Under the designation “ Saccammina ? ( Calcisplicera ) 
eriana ,” 2 Principal Dawson has described certain minute calcareous spheres, plentiful in 
one of the Devonian limestones of Ohio. Although I have not myself been able to recognise 
Foraminiferal characters in specimens of the organism kindly transmitted to me by two 
or three American correspondents, at any rate not with any degree of certainty, I am not 
1 Hanclbucli der Palseontologie, vol. i. p. 76, fig. 5. 
2 Canadian Naturalist, 1880, vol. x. No. 1, p. 5. 
