2 BULLETIN 71, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



genera BUoculina, Spiroloculina, Triloculina, Articulina, Quinque- 

 loculina, and Adelosina, all genera which he described. 



Perhaps d'Orbigny's most important contribution was the recog- 

 nizing of the relative position of the chambers and the consequent 

 number visible from the exterior. The chamber arrangement, very 

 definitely described and figured by d'Orbigny, was not in some cases 

 later recognized by subsequent authors as of generic importance. 



By the early English group of workers on the Foraminifera, Car- 

 penter, Parker, Jones, and Brady, the genus Miliolina was taken to 

 include Triloculina and Quinqueloculina as well as certain other 

 genera. These two genera mentioned were not understood as de- 

 scribed by d'Orbigny, as may be seen by Carpenter's figures of 

 Quinqueloculina, which are really copies of Parker's figures in an earlier 

 paper. 1 



Parker's ideal transverse sections (on p. 57, fig. 5, a, b, and c) do 

 not represent Quinqueloculina as described by d'Orbigny. Moreover 

 the various genera and their different characters were only recog- 

 nized by Carpenter and others as pure variations. The fact that these 

 animals were unicellular has in the minds of many workers on the 

 Foraminifera presupposed an unlimited amount of variation and the 

 explanation of nearly all different characters on this basis. The 

 larger work of Carpenter, Parker, and Jones, Introduction to the 

 Study of the Foraminifera, 1862, helped greatly to fix this idea of 

 unlimited variation and the supposed lack of any definite characters. 

 An example of the extreme view of Carpenter is shown in his intro- 

 duction (p vii) in the following words: "Sharply defined divisions — 

 whether between species, genera, families, or orders — do not exist 

 among Foraminifera.'''' 



Brady in the Challenger report and elsewhere breaks away some- 

 what from the extreme of these views in that he describes new species 

 and genera, but he is plainly influenced by the work of Carpenter and 

 tries to unite various forms on the basis of variation rather than 

 seeking the true explanation of their differences. Brady figures 

 sections of some of the Miliolidae, but the important early chambers 

 are usually indistinct and he makes little reference to them. 



Goes 2 adopted early adopted extreme views of variability in the 

 Foraminifera and the uselessness of distinguishing more than a few 

 central species about which the others should be grouped as variants. 

 As an example of his extreme views at this time, he includes under 

 the genus Miliola three species, the first of which, M. seminulum 

 (Linnaeus), he divides into six varieties. Under this species Goes 

 includes as synonyms more than a hundred specific names and five 



»On the Miliclitidae (Agathistegnes d'Orbigny) of the East Indian Seas, Part I, Miliola, Ann. Mag. 

 Nat. Hist., ser. 2, vol. b, 1858, p. 53, etc. 



* On the Reticularian Rhizopoda of the Caribbean Sea, Kongl. Svensk. Vet. Akad. Handl., vol. 19, No. 

 4, 1882. 



