188 SUPPLEMENTAEY NOTES. 



issues from a single opening, and is withdrawn into the same by contraction ; in others the 

 filaments project only through each of the pores in the shell which covers the last segment ; in 

 others they issue from both the large aperture and the foramina. In fine, these filaments or 

 pseudopodla fulfil in the foraminifera the functions of the numerous tentacula in the Asteriadse, 

 or Star-fishes, serving as instruments of locomotion and attachment. 



Neither organs of nutriment nor of reproduction have been detected. In the genera having 

 one large aperture from which the filaments issue and retract, we can conceive nutriment to be 

 absorbed by that opening ; but this cannot be the case in the species which have the last cell 

 closed up ; in these the filaments issuing through the foramina are probably also organs of nutri- 

 tion. M. D'Orbigny considers the Foraminifera as constituting a distinct class in zoology ; less 

 complicated than the Echinoderms and the Polypiaria in their internal organization, they have 

 by their filaments the mode of locomotion of the first, and by their free, individual existence — not 

 aggregated and immovably fixed — they are more advanced in the scale of being than the latter. 

 To me they appear to be merely hydra-form polypes of the most simple structure, protected 

 by shells;' those composed of different segments, I conceive to be a single aggregated individual, 

 and not a successive series of beings. 



The white chalk is well known to be largely composed of a few kinds of foraminifera, but the 

 occurrence of the soft bodies of these animalcules in a fossil state was first discovered by me, in 

 1845, in chalk-flints, and was announced in a paper, read before the Geological Society, entitled, 

 " Notes of a Microscopical Examination of Chalk and Flint."'^ This statement was regarded 

 by some eminent palaeontologists as so " startling and unsatisfactory," that I resumed the inves- 

 tigation, and communicated the result to the Eoyal Society, in a memoir " On the Fossil Remains 

 of the Soft Parts of Foraminifera discovered in the Chalk and Flint of the South-East of England;"' 

 and with the kind assistance of that able chemist and microscopist, Mr. Henry Deane, of Clapham 

 Common, I obtained, by immersing chalk in dilute hydrochloric acid, and mounting the residue in 

 Canada balsam, several specimens of the entire integuments of the bodies of Rotalite, as distinct 

 as if recent ! This fact is now admitted ; and the experiment has been successfully repeated in 

 India, by Mr. Carter, on the limestones of that country ; * and in America, by Dr. Bailey, &c.^ 

 In some limestone recently collected by my eldest son, Mr. Walter Mantell, in the Middle 

 Island of New Zealand, and which, like our cretaceous strata, is almost entirely made up of 

 foraminifera, I have detected the soft parts of the bodies of Rotalise in the cells of the fossil shells, 

 as distinctly as in the chalk of England ; and two of the species appear to be identical with 

 European forms. 



M. D'Orbigny gives the following summary of the distribution of the known fossil species of 

 Foraminifera : — 



There are 228 species in the Tertiary deposits of Vienna alone, of which twenty-seven species 

 are known living in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. 



Foraminifera are unknown in the Silurian and Devonian formations. 



' An admirable paper on the " Pohjstomella crispa"\>y Mr. Williamson, of Manchester, (Trans. Micros. Society of London, 

 vol. ii.) should be consulted on this question. 



2 These "Kotes" were withdrawn, and published in the Annals of Natural History for August, 1845. 



= Published in Philos. Trans. Part iv. for 1846. 



'' " On the existence of Beds of Foraminifera, recent and fossil, on the South-East of Arabia," by H. J. Carter, Esq. 

 Assistant Surgeon, Bombay. Proceedings of the Bombay Asiatic Society, 1848. 



* A remarkable foraminiferous deposit of chalk detritus occurs at Charing, in Kent, and was first examined and described 

 by William Harris, Esq. ; it contains immense numbers of many kinds of foraminifera, and of the cases or shells of ento 

 mostraca, of the genus Cytherina, with spicules of sponges, &c. — See Wonders of Geology, vol. 1. p. 324. 



