190 DR. CARPENTER'S RESEARCHES ON THE FORAMINIFERA. 



description was founded (these being now contained in the ' Muse'e d'Histoire Natu- 

 relle'), I have been able to compare them with my own; and finding that they 

 correspond with the peculiar type of the latter, which is represented in Plate V. 

 figs. 2 & 3, I have no hesitation in saying that in this description also the true 

 marginal pores, represented in Plate V. fig. 6, have been overlooked; and that what 

 are described by M. DE BLAINVILLE as pores, are nothing else than incomplete cells 

 left open in the frilled edges which bound the marginal furrow above and below 

 (see ^[ 25). A similar description has since been given by M. DUJARDIN *, who does 

 not hesitate to regard the disk as a polypary, and to speak of the animals whereby it 

 is formed, as polypes. 



4. In the Memoir of Professor EHRENBERG already referred to, we find the genus 

 Orbitolitea for the first time associated with true Foraminifera, as a member of his 

 class BRYOZOA, order Polythalamia, suborder Polysomatia, family jlsterodiscina, 

 wherein it is placed next to Lunulites, which undoubtedly belongs to the group of 

 Bryozoa (Polyzoa) as now restricted. This family he characterizes as follows : 

 " Gemmis in eodem piano prodeuntibus, polypiaria plana, discoidea, formantibus, 

 osculis distinctis post mortem apertis ;" and it is by the last of these characters that 

 he distinguishes it from the family Soritidce, consisting of the two genera Sorites and 

 jjmphisonts, of which he says, "Osculis contracto corpore, tanquam operculo duro 

 clausis." If any faith whatever is to be placed in Professor EHRENBERG'S figures and 

 descriptions, his Sorties is nothing else than LAMARCK'S Orbulites marginalis ; whilst 

 his Amphisorus, which differs from Sorites merely in having two layers of cells instead 

 of one, is (as I shall hereafter show) the same type in a higher grade of development. 

 I cannot conceal my astonishment, however, that so practised a microscopic observer 

 should have entirely overlooked the real marginal openings between the cells; still 

 more, that he should have described the entirely-closed cells of the surface as covered 

 in by a moveable operculum, which merely shuts their orifices when the animal is 

 contracted ; and further, that, mistaking an accidental for a normal opening of some 

 of the cells, he should have ventured to figure an eight-armed Bryozoon as issuing 

 forth from one of them, a phenomenon which, I do not hesitate to say, is entirely 

 irreconcileable with our existing knowledge of the organization of the animal of 

 which these disks are the skeletons. 



5. The earlier publications of M. D'ORBIGNY on the subject of the Foraminifera do 

 not include any notice of this genus ; and neither in the systematic arrangement 

 which he put forth in his article in the 'Diet. Univ. d'Hist. Nat.' tome v. (1844), nor 

 in that contained in his 'Forarn. Foss. de Vienne' (1846), is the order Cyclostegues 

 recognized, which makes its appearance for the first time in his 'Cours Elementaire 

 de Paleontologie,' tome ii. (1852), between the Monostegues and the Helicostegues, 

 with the following definition (p. 192) :" Animal compose" de segments nombreux, 

 places en lignes circulates. Coquille disco'idale, composee de loges, concentriques, 



* Diet. Univ. d'Hist. Nat., tome vii. p. 777. 



