1893.1 MTTKOSfOnrAL JOT'TJXAL. 223 



Classification of the Radiol.iria. 

 By REV. FREirK li. CARTER, 



MiiNTCI.AIK. N. .1. 



Ill a loriiuT pa|)er,(see this Jouunal for 1892j, I guvca chis.si- 

 fication of the 42 f^enera found by Ehrenherg in the liarbadoes 

 (lej)()sit as arranged by Hacckel. That seemed a fairly large 

 nund)er of genera for the student to make himself acquainted 

 with, but it proves to be child's play in comparison with what 

 he must do to master these Ikirbadoes forms alone. For, in- 

 stead of 42, 1 find tiiere are no less than 191 genera now known 

 to exist in that deposit or almost five times as man\' as we con- 

 sidered. And here let me point out the richness of this Barba- 

 does earth, in other words, how remarkably representative it is 

 of all the fossil forms. 



The Radiolaria are divided by Haeckel into four legions, 

 namely, — 



Spumellaria, (or Peripylsea,) 

 AcANTHARiA, ( OY Actipylwa,) 

 Nasskllakia, (or Mono])yl{ea,) 

 Ph.bodaria, (or Cannopyla?a.) 



Now, " of these four legions, " he says, the" Acantharia, (oh 

 account of the solubility of their skeletons,) have en- 

 tirely vanished and have never been found fossil. Of the 

 Pn.'EODARiA, whose silicate skeleton is not, as a rule, capable of 

 fossilization, only one section (Z)id^oc/i/(^a), of a single family 

 (CANNORHAPIIIDA) has been observed fos-il. Hence the 

 fossil remains of the Radiolariabelongalmost exclusively to the 

 two legions, Spumellaria and Nassellaria, which were form- 

 erly united under the term " Polycystina.*' * 



Now, the total number of genera described by Haeckel in the 

 Challenger Report, is 739. But, of these, 168 have only Ijeen 

 observed in the living condition. Hence the number of fossil 

 genera is 571. And of these, 191 genera, or fully one-third, have 

 been found in the Barbadoes deposit alone. But even that does 

 not tell the whole story. In the legion Spumellaria, all the 

 5 families of S{)ha'r()idea are rej)resented ; all the 7 families 

 of Prunoidea ; and 4 out of the 6 families of Discoidea. 

 So that though there are no representatives of the 9 families of 

 * Challenger Report, Vol. 18, p. CIV, 



