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(aulax, a furrow, and discus)

Valve usually circular, plane or with an elevated zone, frequently inflated beneath the processes; central space irregular or rounded, sometimes absent; markings granular, radial, sometimes in a reticulum.

The genus comprises more than one hundred species most of which are fossil, and is represented in this locality by a single form, A. argus, included by Rattray in his section "Retiformes," distinguished by the presence of a reticulum.

AULACODISCUS ARGUS (EHR.) SCHMIDT

Frustule in zone view elliptical. Valve circular, 125-190 µ in diam., closely covered with two kinds of markings, one, a mesh of large, radiating, angular cells, the outer plate, and the other, radiating rows of circular granules with hyaline spaces intervening and closer near the border, forming the inner plate which can occasionally be seen detached. Central space absent. The walls of the angular cells are crossed with fine lines and are probably composed of granules compressed so closely as to produce partial opacity, the depth of which depends in a measure not only on the superposition of the two plates, but on the relative closeness and thickness of the cell-walls. In a fully-developed specimen the effect is to produce more or less triangular cells containing three or four granules. In some cases the opacity is so great as to render detail invisible.

In the figure the valve is supposed to be divided into three sectors, illustrating at "a" the lower plate, at "c" the combination of the upper and lower plates, and in the other sector the cellular mesh of the upper plate. Processes, usually three, quite robust and inserted at from one-fourth to one-fifth the length of the radius from the border which is striated on the inner side. A form with four processes is found in the lower blue clay.

Tripodiscus argus Ehr.

Eupodiscus argus (Ehr.) Wm. Sm.

Not uncommon in the blue clay.

Pl. 4, Fig. 8.