2 On the Foraminifera of America, and 
our being aware of it, one of the most important parts in 
nature. Can it indeed fail to strike with wonder every one 
who reflects that the sand of all sea-coasts is so filled with 
these microscopic animals termed Foraminifera, that it is often 
composed of them to the extent of no lessthanahalf? Plan- 
cus* counted 6000 in an ounce of sand from the Adriatic Sea ; 
we ourselyes have reckoned 3,840,000 in an ounce of sand 
from the Antilles. If we calculate larger quantities, as for 
example a cubic yard, the amount surpasses all human con- 
ception, and we have difficulty in expressing the resulting 
numbers in figures. And yet how insignificant is all this 
when we regard in the same point of view the whole enor- 
mous mass of the sea-coasts of the Earth? We thence deduce 
the certainty that no other series of beings can, in regard to 
number, be compared to the group we are now considering, 
not even the myriads of minute crustacea which colour large 
spaces on the surface of the sea,t and which afford nourish- 
ment to the largest animals, viz. the whales, and not even 
the infusory animals of fresh water, whose shields partly com- 
pose Tripoli;{ for these are limited in their distribution, 
whereas the Foraminifera occur on all coasts. 
If we inquire what part is performed by the minute animals 
now under consideration, and many of which do not attain a 
half, a fourth, or a sixth of a millimetre in size, we shall find no 
lessreason for astonishment. The authorhas examined thesand 
of all parts of the earth, and found that it is the remains of 
the Foraminifera which constitute, in a great measure, banks 
that interrupt navigation, which stop up bays and straits of 
the sea, which fill up harbours, and which, together with co- 
rals, produce those islands that rise up in the warm portions 
of the Pacific Ocean. When we regard the influence of the 
Foraminifera on the strata of the crust of the globe, we be- 
* Ariminensis de conchis minus notis. 
+ Near Brazil we haye seen the sea coloured a deep red for nearly a de- 
gree, and this was caused by a species of the genus Cetochylus, which, ac- 
cording to the testimony of the whale fishers, forms almost exclusively the 
food of whales.—See Voyage dans ? Amérique Méridionale, part. hist, t. 1. p. 17. 
t Academy of Sciences of Berlin, 29th July 1837.—Annales des Sciences 
Nat. vol. viii. p. 374; also Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xxii. 
p. 84. 
