476 Mr. Edward Heron-Allen [May 21, 



engaged the attention of zoologists. Before Linnaeus we have the 

 works of Plancus,^ Ledermiiller,- and others, but between the time of 

 Linni^us and the early years of the last century the era of monographs 

 began ; AValker and Boys in England,^ Fichtel and Moll in Germany,"* 

 Lamarck in France,"^ Soldani in Italy,*' have left behind them 

 specialist works upon the Foraminifera which still form (sometimes to 

 our serious embarrassment) the foundations of our study. 



The recent period may be said to have commenced in 1819, when 

 the father of Alcide d'Orlngny wrote to the geologist Fleuriau de 

 Bellevue that his son was studying " microscopic cephalopods " from 

 the shore sands at Esnandes, near their native town, Ija RochelleJ 

 After this, captains of ships and travelling naturalists supplied young 

 d'Orbigny with a mass of material from all parts of the world, 

 resulting in the publication of his Tableau Methodique,^ in which a 

 vast number of species both recent and fossil were recorded. His 

 records from Madagascar in particular are of supreme interest for us, 

 for we have recently examined a series of dredgings from Kerimba, 

 (SI. 17) on the adjacent African coast,'-^ in which we have redis- 

 covered most, if not all, of his Madagascan species. He recorded in 

 particular the species Pavonina flahelliformis (SI. 18). which after 

 1826 was entirely lost sight of for half a century, when it was 

 rediscovered in Madagascan sand by Brady .^^ It is quite one of the 

 most beautiful of the Foraminifera, whether viewed as an opaque 

 object or by transmitted light (SI. 19). 



The true nature of the Foraminifera was not however understood 

 untiliDujardin in 1835 ^^ separated them from the Cephalopods, among 

 which they had been grouped on account of certain superficial 

 characteristics, and their extensile bodies. From this time onward 

 the literature of the Foraminifera has expanded into a vast body of 

 memoirs and monographs in every European language. ^"- 



^ Janus Plancus, De conchis minus notis liber. Venice, 1739. 2nd ed., 

 Rome, 1760. 



- M. F. Ledermiiller, Mikroskopische Gemuths-und Augen-Ergotzung. 

 Bayreuth, 1760-1. 



^ Walker and Boys, Testacea minuta rariora. London, 1784, 



■* Fichtel and Moll, Testacea microscopica. Vienna, 1798. 



^ J. B. de Lamarck, Systeme des Animaus sans Vertebres. Paris, 1801. 



•^ A. Soldani, Testaceographia, Senis, 1789-98. 



' C. d'Orbigny, Journal de Physique, vol. Ixxxviii. p. 187. Paris, 1819. 



^ A. d'Orbigny, Tableau Methodique de la Classe des Rhizopodes, Ann. Sci. 

 Nat., vol. vii. pp. 245-314. Paris, 1826. 



^ E. Heron-Allen and A. Earland, The Foraminifera of the Kerimba 

 Archipelago, Trans. Zool. Soc. (Lond.), pt. i. vol. xx. (1914), p. 363; pt. ii. 

 vol. xxi. (1915). (In the press.) 



^^ H. B. Bradv, Challenger Reports, vol. ix., Foraminifera, p. 375, pi. xlv. 

 figs. 17-21. 1884. 



^^ F. Dujardin, Observations nouvelles sur les pretendus C^phalopodes 

 Microscopiques, Bull. Soc. Sci. Nat. France, no. 3, p. 36. 1835. 



^- C. D. Sherborn, A Bibliography of the Foraminifera. London, 1888. 



