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CARBONIFEROUS AND PERMIAN FORAMINIFERA. 



interest of the unstudied palaeozoic types eventually induced me to lay aside the work I 

 had been engaged upon, and to devote my scanty leisure to their elucidation, under the 

 impression that the total number of species was very small, and that I should soon be able 

 to revert to my former task — an idea by no means verified by experience. 



Whilst Mr. Moore was pursuing his researches chiefly in the lead-mining districts 

 of England, Mr. John Young, F.G.S., of Glasgow, had been forming a collection 

 of the minuter fossils from the Scottish coal-fields, and on learning that I was occupied 

 upon a portion of the subject, with characteristic kindness placed his gatherings of 

 Eoraminifera at my disposal. 



Subsequently my friend Mr. W. W. Stoddart, F.G.S., of Bristol, proffered me the 

 use of his fine collection of microscopical sections of limestone rocks, and rendered further 

 valuable aid by procuring for me supplies of material from various localities in the neighbour- 

 hood of Clifton. To the more recent friendly offices of Mr. R. Etheridge, junr., E.G.S., 

 and other officials of the Geological Survey of Scotland, I am indebted for the opportunity 

 of working out the fossil Rhizopoda of a very considerable portion of the North-British 

 Carboniferous area. 



With the name of Mr. John Young it is natural to associate that of his 

 assiduous colleague Mr. David Robertson, F.G.S., the results of whose microscopical 

 researches, always most freely communicated, have served to fill many a blank in the 

 Distribution Tables. Nor must I omit from this general acknowledgment my thanks, 

 more particularly expressed on a later page, to Mr. G. A. Lebour, F.G.S., late of the 

 Geological Survey of England and Wales, for his assistance in the more strictly geological 

 portion of my work. 



There are many others to whom I am under obligation scarcely less considerable than 

 those who have been mentioned, either for supplies of rough material from places to 

 which I have had no access, or for the loan of specimens. In a subsequent section 

 (that headed " Geological and Geographical"), wherein each locality is separately named, 

 opportunity is taken to acknowledge such contributions individually, and I trust that no 

 omissions may have occurred through chance inadvertence. 



It is to the hearty co-operation of so many scientific men who have had, from one 

 cause or other, peculiar facilities for observation and for the collection of material in 

 particular fields, that the present Monograph owes any claim it may have to be regarded 

 as representative in respect to England and Scotland, and in so far as the term can be 

 applied to a very meagre instalment, to Ireland also. 



To the active interest of my friend M. Ernest Vanden Broeck, of Brussels, in all 

 that concerns recent and fossil Protozoa, I owe the chance that I have enjoyed of 

 examining some of the Carboniferous shales of Belgium, especially from the neighbourhood 

 of Namur and Liege, and the results have so important a bearing upon the aspects of the 

 Rhizopod-fauna of our own rocks that the original intention to restrict the scope of the 

 synopsis to British fossils has been necessarily abandoned. 



