THE society's NOTE-BOOKS. 97 



heavy rain, churning up the fine particles into mud. This 

 again has been dried and cracked by the sun, and the broken and 

 separated fragments have been rolled along hither and thither by the 

 wind. Many of them are driven into the water, where they get 

 massed together, and become stationary ; while as time goes on, 

 other deposits are formed over and around them, and so the 

 Oolite is found sometimes imbedded in the Hmestone, sometimes 

 interstratified with it. 



T. Inman. 



Nummulites ; from 7iumjnus, money, — owing to their coin-like 

 shape. There are few forms which play a more important part 

 than these do in the configuration of some portions of the earth's 

 surface. Originally the shelly, calcareous envelopes of Protozoan 

 Rhizopods, they have been welded together by geologic action, 

 and now constitute very massive and important rocks. One huge 

 stratum of Nummulitic Limestone, often attaining to a thickness of 

 1500 feet, extends through Southern Europe and the North of 

 Africa ; from Egypt it has been traced into Asia Minor, and thence 

 through the Himalayas into India. It is from this that the Egyp- 

 tian Pyramids were built; and the curious fossil forms attracted 

 the attention of the ancients, being mentioned by Strabo and 

 others. Many popular legends have been attached to them, one being 

 that they were the petrified remains of the lentils used as food by 

 the workmen who built the Pyramids. In Germany they were 

 known as Bauer ?i-pfe?inige^ or peasant's penny, and as Teufels-gdd^ 

 or devil's money, — both appellations being in common use. Later 

 on they came under the notice of Naturalists : — Lancisi, an Italian 

 physician, supposed them to be the Madreporiform plates of 

 Echinites ; Buckmann, that they were bivalve Mollusca, while 

 other authorities classed them amongst the Cephalopoda ; but in 

 1825 D'Orbigny ranged them in the class then first known as 

 Foraminifera. In size they vary considerably, — from a mere 

 particle to the bigness of a shilling ; in a few cases even reaching 

 as much as 4J inches in diameter. 



The grand era of the Nummulites was during the Eocene 

 formation of early Tertiary times : existing forms are but a poor 

 representative of the wonderful development reached by them at that 

 period: they do still occur, however, though of humble dimensions, 

 both in Arctic, Temperate, and Tropical Seas. 



E. LOVETT. 



