414 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



accepted for the genus by De Blainville and Defranc." [It 

 is but justice to De Blaiuville to point out that he quotes without 

 disapproval the statement of Schweigger, " que les dactylopores 

 et les ovulites ne sont rien autre chose que des articulations 

 d'une grande espeee de cellaire, analogue a la cellaire salicorne "] . 

 " In 1852 Dactylopora was included among the Foraminifera by 

 d'Orbigny, who showed, notwithstanding, by the place he as- 

 signed to it, a misapprehension of the real nature scarcely 

 less complete than that under which his predecessers had 

 lain ; for he ranks it in his order Monostegues, next to the 

 unilocular Ovulites, and says of it : ' c'est une Ovulite egalement 

 percee des deux bouts, pourvuedes larges pores placees par lignes 

 transverses.' How utterly erroneous is this descriptionwill appear 

 from the details to be presently given, yet d'Orbigny's authority 

 has given it currency enough to cause it to be accepted by such 

 intelligent palaeontologists as Pictet and Bi'onn, who in the latest 

 editions of their respective treatises have transferred Dactylopora 

 to the place indicated by him, not, however, without the expres- 

 sion of a doubt on the part of Bronn as to whether the true 

 place of the genus is not among the Fistulidas in alliance witli 

 Synapta and Holothuria — a suggestion that indicates a perversion 

 of ideas on the subject for which it is not easy to account. 

 The complex structure of the organism in question was first 

 described and the interpretation of that structure on the basis 

 of an extended comparison with simpler forms was first given by 

 Messrs. Parker and Jones in so unobtrusive a manner as scarcely 

 to challenge the attention which their investigations deserve, and 

 I gladly avail myself of the opportunity which the present publi- 

 cation affords to give a fuller account, with the requisite illus- 

 trations of this remarkable type, the elucidation of which seems 

 to me not unlikely to lead to a reconsideration of the place 

 assigned to many other organisms at present ranked amongst 

 Zoophytes or Polyzoa ; " and then follow nine pages of a most 

 elaborate description of every ridge and furrou', of every eleva- 

 tion and depression to be met with in any of the so-called species, 

 so that probably no single vegetable cell was ever before so 

 minutely described. 



The genus is placed the eleventh in order of the family IMi- 

 liolida, a family which contains some of the most typical of 

 Poraminifers. " It may be conjectured without much improba- 

 bility," writes Dr. Carpenter, " that Dactylopora is only the 

 single representative of a group whose various forms filled up 

 the hiatus which at present intervenes between itself and its 

 nearest allies among the ordinary Foramiuifera." But, writes 

 M. Munier-Chalmas, " the study and comparison of species of 

 Dasycladus, Cymopolia, Acetabularia, Neomeris, &c., in the her- 

 barium of the museum, and in that of M. Ed. Bornet, who placed 

 without reserve at my disposal his library and collections of these 

 plants,proved to me that the species of Dactylopora, Acicularia, 

 Poly try pa, &e., are decidedly algse, very nearly allied to species of 



