William Daniel Conybeare

“ I cannot conclude without apologizing to the Society for having occupied so much of its attention, by minute details which I fear may have appeared extremely jejune and uninteresting, as they are confined to the illustration of an insulated fact in the history of organic remains, in itself of very inferior importance, and cannot be said to throw any additional light on the general views even of that branch of geological science with which they are connected. ”

“ That the flat surface of flint over which the globules are in that specimen distributed, had been originally occupied by a large piece of the striated shell, the fragments of which occur so abundantly in the chalk-strata and accompanying flints, being very commonly considered as mutilated portions of a fossil pinna. ”

“ Buckland the following observations relative to this subject, accompanied by a recent specimen which appears to illustrate them in a very satisfactory manner.
“The hollows that afforded a mould for the formation of these singular bodies, appear to me to have been the work of some minute parasitical insect. The small aperture, the cast of which now forms the projecting axis of each globule, was probably perforated by this intruder as the entrance to his future habitation ”