538 FORAMINIFERA ; NCMMULITE ; MILIOLA. 



1111. If we merely consider this group as it presents itself 

 to our notice in the existing epoch, we should have but a very 

 imperfect idea of its importance. The forms under which it 

 once existed in much greater abundance, have been preserved to 

 us ; and recent inquiries have added to our knowledge of these 

 in a most astonishing degree. The fossils termed Nummulites 

 have long been observed to bear a large share in the formation 

 of extensive beds of limestone rock. They were remarked by 

 Strabo in the stones of the Pyramids ; and he informs us that 

 they were commonly reputed to be the petrified impressions of 

 the lentils, which had been used as daily food by the workmen 

 engaged in building them, and takes some pains to refute this 

 idea. By subsequent authors, these Nummulites have been 

 supposed to be the opercula ( 902) of the Ammonite ( 897), 

 which, it was imagined, might probably form a new one, every 

 time that it added a chamber to its shell. The discovery, how- 

 ever, of minute shells of a similar character at present existing, 

 and evidently belonging to distinct animals, established their 

 claim to a similar position. Nummulites are probably the 

 largest forms of this group, of which D'Orbigny has described 

 fifty-two genera, and above 600 species ; some of them measure 

 about an inch and a half in diameter, whilst a great proportion 

 of the rest are microscopic. Many limestone strata of the tertiary 

 period, are almost entirely composed of the larger Nummulites ; 

 and these strata constitute the principal part of several mountain 

 ranges in Southern Europe, such as the Alps, Carpathians, and 

 Pyrenees. The Sphinx, as well as the Pyramids, are composed 

 of a limestone loaded with Nummulites. A more minute shell, 

 the Miliola, of the same description, but no larger than a millet- 

 seed, bears an equal proportion in the mass of limestone strata 

 which are quarried near Paris. " We scarcely condescend," 

 observes Lamarck in reference to this fact, " to examine micro- 

 scopic shells, from their insignificant size ; but we cease to think 

 them insignificant when we reflect, that it is by means of the 

 smallest objects that Nature everywhere produces her most 

 remarkable and astonishing phenomena. Whatever she may 

 seem to lose in point of volume in the production of living bodies, 



