212 Messrs. Parker and Jones on 



could not greatly assist zoological investigations. Several 

 beautiful figures are also given in the same volume of the 

 Berlin Academy Transactions for 1838, of some recent Fora- 

 minifera, highly magnified (plates 1, 2, 3; see further on); 

 and several samples of washed dust from various limestones 

 and other fossil deposits are also figured on plate 4, magnified 

 about 300 times linear. Some interesting conclusions were 

 arrived at, valuable and true in the main : — namely, that the 

 same kinds of Foraminifera (omitting all the other minute 

 organisms, with which we do not now occupy ourselves) 

 occur in both the fossil and recent state ; but that at the same 

 time each set of strata has more or less decidedly its own 

 special group of Microzoa, and that Chalk in particular, and 

 probably most limestones and calcareous marls, are largely 

 composed of the shells of Foraminifera [Polythalamia^ Ehr.), 

 in some instances these minute organisms, with Coccoliths 

 (Morpholites, Ehr., in part), appearing to be the main consti- 

 tuents of White Chalk. 



The following year Dr. Ehrenberg studied some living 

 Foraminifera of the North Sea at Cuxhaven ; and he figured 

 two of them [Polystomella striatopunctata and Nonionina um- 

 hilicata) with great exactness, as well as some obscurer forms, 

 which he had found in both the living and the fossil state. 

 (See further on.) 



Amplifying with his own increased knowledge the already 

 published observations on this subject of the persistence 

 of low orders of life. Dr. Ehrenberg wrote the interesting 

 memoir which appears, with the plates just mentioned, in the 

 Berlin Acad. Transact, for 1839, and in Taylor's ' Scientific 

 Memoirs,' vol. iii. art. xiii. Full illustrations of the numerous 

 Foraminifera referred to, and their comparison with previously 

 published species, were still wanting ; and, as we shall have 

 occasion to remark, the geological status of some of their 

 sources was wrongly determined. 



In 1843 several highly magnified figures of minute recent 

 Foraminifera from America were treated of and illustrated by 

 Ehrenberg in the Berlin Acad. Transact, for 1841, pp. 438 &c. 

 Unfortunately, however, being merely views of microscopic 

 objects seen by transmitted light^ and therefore appearing 

 merely as sections, or bare skeletons as it were, of the minutest* 

 forms, little can really be learnt from them. (See further on, 



* It is not, However, wholly on account of their minuteness that they 

 are nearly useless to the zoologist, but for want of structural detail. 

 Many minute Foraminifera are as good representatives of species and 

 marked varieties as large specimens ; for with arrested growth charac- 

 teristic features are still preserved. 



