128 HISTORY OF GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 



them the chronological succession of the strata. Parkinson 

 finally expressed his belief that the Mosaic account of Creation 

 could only be accepted in its general intent, that the "days" 

 of the Biblical account in reality indicated very long periods of 

 time in the development of the earth. A summary of Parkin- 

 son's work was afterwards published under the title of Outline 

 of Oryctology (London, 1822). 



While these were the more representative, works on palaeon- 

 tology which appeared in Germany, France, and England 

 during the early decades of last century, numerous papers on 

 special fossil genera or local faunas were published in scientific 

 memoirs and journals. A few of the more important works 

 devoted to the various animal types may be mentioned. 



In the class of Protozoa, fossil Nummulites had been known 

 to the ancients. Herodotus had mentioned their occurrence 

 in Egypt, and Strabo had compared them with lentils. Conrad 

 Gesner (1565) described the first Nummulites known in 

 Europe; they were found in the neighbourhood of Paris, and 

 referred to the Ammonites. Aldrovandi regarded them as 

 sports of nature, and Kircher described them under the name 

 of "caraway" or "cummin" stones. Good descriptions and 

 illustrations of Swiss Nummulites were given by Scheuchzer 

 and Lang, and after that time they were included in all 

 collective works on fossils under various names discoliths, 

 helmintholites, helicites, nummulites, lenticulites. Special 

 papers were written upon them, but authors failed to arrive at 

 any clear understanding about their zoological position. As a 

 rule they were associated with Nautilus and the Ammonites, but 

 they were sometimes regarded as worms (De Saussure), or as 

 the inner shells of molluscs (Fortis, De Luc). 



In 1711 J. B. Beccari discovered the first small fossil 

 forami/iifers in the Tertiary sand of Bologna, and compared 

 them later (1731) with the small shells found by Janus Planchus 

 (Bianchi) on the beach of Rimini. In 1791 Soldani published 

 his excellent work on the foraminifers from the Tertiary strata 

 of Siena; the figures show the specimens many times enlarged. 

 Fichtel and Moll prepared a monograph, with twenty-four 

 coloured plates, showing all foraminifers known up to 1803, the 

 date of publication, and Batsch gave a number of clear illustra- 

 tions of different genera and species. Nothing was known about 

 the soft parts of the foraminifers; the whole literature confined 

 itself to the description and classification of the shells. 



