Plate 11. Figs. 9, 10, 11.

Lingulocaris maccoyi Etheridge Jur., 1892, pp. 5–8, pl. iv.

Caryocaris curvilatus Gurley, 1896, p. 87, pl. iv, fig. 3; pl. v, fig. 3.

Rhinopterocaris maccoyi (Eth. fil.); Chapman, 1903, pp. 114–117, pl. xviii, figs. 9, 17 (non 16).

Observations.—This genus and species is one of the best known of the phyllocarids of the Southern Hemisphere. It is often of comparatively large size and wonderfully well preserved. The carapace is tenuous and reminds one of a neuropterous or other insect wing in its membranous character.

The nomenclature of this species is somewhat involved, and may be summed up as follows:—

McCoy named the phyllocarid in 1861, when writing up the Natural History of Victoria for the International Exhibition, as Hymenocaris salteri. This MS. name remained as such for over 30 years, and was twice catalogued in Bigsby's Thesaurus Siluricus, as Hymenocaris and Caryocaris. J. W. Salter, who had evidently examined a specimen in 1862, did not think it belonged to the genus Hymenocaris. R. Etheridge Jur., in 1892, examined specimens of this phyllocarid, which W. W. Froggatt had collected from the Lower Ordovician (Bendigonian) of Bendigo (Sandhurst), Victoria. Other examples were also supplied him by R. A. F. Murray from the Lower Ordovician (Castlemainian) of Baynton's, Campaspe River, Victoria. From the characters being intermediate between Hymenocaris and Caryocaris, as these specimens showed, Etheridge was induced to place them in the genus Lingulocaris. In 1903 the present writer (loc. supra cit.), after examining a very large collection of these fossils from Victoria, in the National Museum, recognised details not hitherto known, and instituted for them a new genus, Rhinopterocaris. These fossils, for example, showed amongst other characters cephalic appendages, masticatory apparatus, and a short telson with sharp oblique stylet.

The New Zealand occurrence of this phyllocarid is of particular importance, since it is quite as typical there as in Victoria, and is indeed associated with a similar facies including an abundance of Caryocaris. Its range in New Zealand is also co-extensive with that in Victoria, namely, from Lancefieldian to Castlemainian.

Of the specimens of Rhinopterocaris maccoyi here figured, fig. 9, with its double valves slightly displaced, shows unmistakeably