﻿A MONOGRAPH 



OF 



CARBONIFEROUS AND PERMIAN 

 EORAMINIFERA 



(THE GENUS FUSULINA EXCEPTED). 



$ I. INTRODUCTION. 



A few words of preface seem necessary by way of commentary on the title, — at any 

 rate an author may claim an opportunity at the very outset to explain the origin of his 

 work, to state its aim and limitations, and to acknowledge, in part at least, the services of 

 those who have helped him in its preparation. 



The geographical extent of the geological formations, one minor phase of whose 

 history the present memoir is intended to illustrate, forbids the idea of exhaustive 

 treatment ; but whatever approach to completeness it may possess, even within the 

 present range of ascertained facts, is due to assistance proffered with no ordinary kindness 

 from many different quarters. 



In the year 1869 I was asked by my friend Mr. Charles Moore, E.G.S., of Bath, to 

 determine for him a number of Foraminifera, which he had met with in " pockets " in 

 the Mountain Limestone, during his researches on mineral veins. This was practically 

 the origin of the present Monograph. I was at that time engaged upon the Liassic 

 Foraminifera, and had little knowledge of those of earlier geological age beyond what 

 was to be gained from transparent sections of Carboniferous Limestone rocks ; and, in the 

 absence of published observations, sufficiently detailed and accurate to serve as a key to 

 the collection, Mr. Moore's specimens were studied rather from the standpoint furnished 

 by a limited number of Liassic forms than on a fitting independent basis. The provisional 

 determinations so made have naturally required much revision, as the relations of the 

 fauna of the period to which they refer have come to be better known. The zoological 



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