IDEAS OP THE EARLY AUTHOES 51 



who gave a good figure of his ' hipidus nuiiiismalis,' 

 which is a fine example of Numinidites complanata. 



One of the first naturalists to notice the minuter 

 Foraminifera which are so frequent in shore sands and 

 the later Tertiary deposits was Beccarius (J. Beccari), 

 who, in 1731, described the various minute shells he 

 found in the yellow Pliocene sands near Bologna. 

 Beccarius also mentions the shore sand of Eimini, on 

 the Adriatic coast, a locality which afterwards yielded 

 many interesting specimens to another observer, 

 Janus Plancus (Giovanni Bianchi), who published 

 his well-known memoir in 1739, on the minute shells 

 from the shore sand at Eimini. In this collection 

 there are many characteristic Foraminifera, and they 

 are referred to generally as ' Coritua hammonls.'' The 

 figures w^hich Plancus gave show that these forms 

 belong to the genera Nodosaria, CristeUai-ia, BotaUa, 

 and Pohjstomella. Some of Plancus's specimens were 

 evidently derived from, or washed out of, the Tertiary 

 clay cliffs near at hand. 



The early observers, it should be noted, classed 

 the minute shells of the Foraminifera with the 

 Nautilus and Serjjulce, under the supposition that 

 they were small individuals of the larger marine 

 shells. 



The figures and descriptions given by Plancus 

 (1739), Gualtieri (1742), and Ledermliller (1760-68) 

 were assigned specific names by Linnteus in the 12th 

 edition of his ' Systema Natura' ' (1766-67), and in 

 Gmelin's edition of the same work (1788-93) the 



K 2 



