DUBLIN MICROSCOPICAL CLUB. 443 



1860; nowadays birds' eggs are not thus blown.] It is the 

 largest of the monothalamous Foraminifera. As a species it 

 aj^pears to hare been short-livod. Fully developed in the deposits 

 of Hauteville and Grignon it breaks in at once in the Eocene 

 period. It lingers as an attenuated form in the Miocene beds 

 of San Domingo. A recent Ovulite has not been met with. 

 Scarcely another Foraminifer preseuts us with a similarly brief 

 history — an undescribed form allied to Dactylopora affording 

 almost the only parallel (namely, Acicularia pavantina, 

 d'Arch.)." 



In passing it may be noted that without doubt this last men- 

 tined form is also only a portion of a calcareous alga. 



The earlier memoir, of which the ' Comptes rendus ' publishes 

 only an extract, reminds us that it is not so very long ago (1842) 

 since Prof. Decaisne demonstrated that a number of marine 

 forms known as zoophvtes, Corallina, Cymopolia, Neomeris, Peni- 

 cillus, Udotea, Halimeda, &c., were in reality veritable alga?, but 

 we may remark that Professor Schweigger, of Konigsberg, had 

 from actual observation of living specimens of several species of 

 these calcareous algse at Villefranche, come to the same conclusion 

 in 1818 (Beobachtungen auf naturhistorichen Eeisen. Anat.- 

 phys. TJntersuchungen liber Corallen,' Berlin, 1818), and if 

 one were to go back to the pre-Linnean times Eay (1690) 

 described Corallina as " plantje genus in aquis nascens," and 

 Spallanzani, Carolini, and Olivi, even maintained the same 

 against the peculiar reasonings of Ellis, the authority of Lin- 

 neus, and despite the conversion of Pallas ; but so influenced 

 by authority were, apparently, most botanists down to 1842, 

 that a Professor of Botany in the Edinburgh University (Gra- 

 ham) politely requested, it is said, the zoologists to keep their 

 Cryptogamia to themselves, and a Professor of Botany in the 

 Dublin University (Harvey), in the first edition of his ' Manual 

 of British Alg^e ' (1841), did not include any of the Corallines. 

 Since the memoirs of Decaisne and Cbauvin, all this has changed, 

 and we imagine that there is now no difference of opinion 

 existing among botanists as to the general affinities of the living 

 forms of calcareous algae. 



M. Munier-Chalmas in his memoir demonstrates that there 

 must be also added to this group a numerous series of fossil 

 forms which the old authors placed am.ong the polyps, and 

 which most of the modern writers on the subject have ranked 

 among the Foraminifera. Bosc, in 1806, described and figured 

 (' Journal de Physique,' Juin, 1806) some fossil organised bodies 

 under the name of Retejoorites oroides, for which bodies Lamarck, 

 in 1816, established the genus Dactylopora. " The most singular 

 varieties of opinion have existed," writes Dr. Carpenter in his 

 well-known ' Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera,' 

 as to the true character of these fossil organisms. In separating 

 them generically from Eetepora Lamarck still associated them in 

 the same group of supposed zoophytes ; this position was also 



