- 117 



dopodian foramina in this object. The calcareous layer closing 

 in each extremity of the cell, exhibits a very minutely- granular 

 aspect, but I do not believe that it is perforated. This is no evi- 

 dence, however, that the object is not a true Foraminifer. Penero- 

 plis lanatus and many other well-established species exhibit precisely 

 the same features in this respect. 



Fig. 11 represents a vertical section of a remarkably fine species, 

 belonging to the same genus, which, I believe, is as yet undescribed, 

 unless it prove to be identical with the Australian form of which 

 some sections are figured by Dr. Carpenter, in his memoir on the 

 structure of Nummulites (Quarterly Journal of the Geol. Soc. of 

 London). I am indebted to Mrs. Wilson, of York, the intelli- 

 gent widow of a Wesleyan missionary who laboured amongst the 

 Friendly Islands, in the South Seas, for several samples "of sand 

 from those remote shores. Though most of them were unusually 

 devoid of 'organisms, one of them, from the island of Tonga, con- 

 tained a rich supply of the most magnificent recent Foraminifera I 

 had yet seen. If size and development are to be regarded as the 

 test, the Foraminifera are retrograding : they appear to have cul- 

 minated in the tertiary era, when the vast masses of Nummulitic 

 limestones were in process of formation. The Foraminifera, thus 

 represented, were giants when compared with their pigmy rela- 

 tions of the present epoch. Such having been my experience of 

 their diminutive size, I was delighted to see in the sand from Tonga, 

 specimens of an Orbiculina (Orbitolites) more than a quarter of an 

 inch in diameter. It is a vertical section of one of these that is 

 represented in fig. 11 * 



In this section we observe the same general features as were 

 noticed in the specimen fig. 8. In the centre we find four large 

 cells, one of which (11, a) is probably the primordial one, being 

 more globular than the rest. Right and left of these central cells 

 we find the structure subdivided by numerous vertical partitions 

 (11, b), separating corresponding intervening segments or cells 

 (11, c). An enlarged and more definite representation of these struc- 

 tures is given in fig. 12 ; whilst in fig. 13 we have the appearance 

 of the outer surface of parts of several concentric rows, exhibiting 

 their external aspect. In the latter example the specimen has been 

 partially ground away at the right-hand of the figure (a), in order to 

 bring the details of a deeper structure better into view ; the oppo- 

 site side of the specimen retains its normal condition. From this 



* See Appendix A. 



