THE ANNALS 
AND 
MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
[SECOND SERIES.] 
“ per litora spargite museum, 
Naiades, et circiim vitreos considite fontes : 
Pollice virgineo teneros hie earpite flores : 
Floribus et pietum, divas, replete eanistrum. 
At VOS, o Nymphee Craterides, ite sub undas ; 
Ite, recurvato variata eorallia truneo 
Vellite museosis e rupibus, et mihi eonehas 
Ferte, Dceb pelagi, et pingui eonehylia suceo.” 
N. Parthenii Giannettasii Elcl. 1. 
No. 1. JANUARY 1848. 
L — On the Recent British species of the genus Lagena. 
By W. C. Williamson, Esq. 
[With two Plates.] 
Whilst i was engaged upon a memoir on the microscopic 
character of the Levant mud and other recent and ancient ocea- 
nic deposits (printed for the forthcoming volume of the Me- 
moirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society), 
my friend W. Reckitt, Esq. of Boston placed in my hands 
some sand obtained on excavating a well near that place, which 
I soon found to abound in specimens of Lagence^. Subsequently 
* This interesting deposit can scarcely be called recent,, being probably 
several thousand years old, and yet its geological character is not such as 
to justify its organisms being introduced into the category of fossils; being 
merely a beach which has been left permanently dry by the tide. When I 
wrote the memoir above referred to, I stated “ that a considerable portion of 
the Fen district was once an estuary, which has undergone considerable 
changes even since the time of the Roman invasion ; the old sea-bank 
having, at that comparatively recent period, been much further inland than 
at present ” (Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 
vol. viii. p. 56). This estuary has been gradually filled up, the elevation of 
the coast or the recession of the ocean causing the sandy debris, once form- 
ing the bed of the latter, to be converted into dry land, and afterwards co- 
vered over with a layer of vegetable mould. Mr. ReckitPs specimen was 
obtained from a depth of seven feet below the surface, where he found a very 
fine sand containing carbonaceous fragments, and a large number of the 
Foraminifera and other microscopic organisms still characteristic of our 
existing sea-beaches, including many of the rarest as well as the most 
Ann. ^ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol. i. 1 
