48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol. 59. 



the richness of whose foraminiferal fauna struck d'Orbigny at once. He communi- 

 cated with de Cande, a naval ofhcer stationed in the West Indies, who supplemented 

 de la Sagra's material with sands from Cuba, Haiti, St. Thomas, Jamaica, Martinique, 

 and Guadalupe, and a year's assiduous work on the material proved to d'Orbigny that 

 Cuba provides all the species to be found in any West Indian gatherings, besides many 

 specie." not found elsewhere in the West Indies. He pronounces the dictum that 

 Cuba can not be compared for Foraminiferal fauna with any place in the world ex- 

 cepting the Adriatic. He found in the Cuban sands 117 species, "one-tenth of the 

 whole of the foraminifera known up to the present day;" and on these results being 

 communicated to de la Sagra they agreed that the work "should serve as a basis for 

 the study of the foraminifera comprehending my general views, my classification, and 

 the succinct characters of all the genera," and he therefore gives an abstract of the 

 general observations which he proposes to publish later in his "ouvrage special." 

 He points out that until that moment nothing at all was known of the Foraminifera 

 of the Antilles except about 20 species that he had noted in the "Tableau Metho- 

 dique." At the end of his introduction he makes the astonishing statement that so 

 specialized are the Cuban forms that of the whole 117 he had only found 5 in other 

 parts of the world, but this must be read in the light of his views on species from 

 different geographical areas. Very many of his peculiarly Cuban species have been 

 swallowed up in the synonymies of other species of wide tropical distribution. At 

 the same time it may be remarked that he recorded several species in 1826 (from 

 material furnished by de Ferussac) which he did not find again in the 1839 material. 



A study of the Jamaican material shows that the species of the 

 Cuban Monograph which are represented fall into three groups: 

 First, those species which are of wide distribution and were found 

 in the West Tndies for the first time and are not distinctively tropical 

 or West Indian. Such species are Globigerina buUoides, G. rubra, G. 

 dutertrei, and PuLvinulina menardii. Secondly, there are species 

 which are known to have a wide distribution in tropical seas, such 

 species as Textularia candeiana, Cymbalopora poeyi, Tretomphalus 

 buUoides, and Triloculma linneiana. The third group contains 

 species so far as known characteristic of the general West Indian 

 regions such as Truncatvlina rosea, Polystomella lanicri, Asterigerina 

 carinata, and Quinqueloculina tricarinata. 



The figures in d'Orbigny 's work are occasionally somewhat con- 

 ventionalized, but as a rule are very faithful in the representation of 

 the species they illustrate, especially when compared, as they should 

 be, with material from the same general region as that from which 

 the originals were obtained. 



A comparison of the general characters of the Jamaican collec- 

 tions and of d'Orbigny's species shows that the West Indian region 

 in less than 10 fathoms (IS meters) has a marked scarcity of 

 Astrorhizidae, Lituolidae, and Lagenidae. The great preponderance 

 of the Miliolidae is what would be predicted in a tropical coral reef 

 region. The Textulariidae and Rotaliidae are represented by com- 

 paratively few species, not as many as might have been expected. 



The region of Montego Bay on the northwest coast of Jamaica is 

 open to the Caribbean, but t\u> area behind the reefs, and especially 



