FOSSIL FORAMINIFERA FROM THE WEST INDIES. 



By Joseph Augustine Cushman. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Very little has been known of the fossil Foraminifera of the West 

 Indies, perhaps except Trinidad and Jamaica, and, although the 

 present paper is based on collections from Cuba, Haiti, and Jamaica 

 of the Greater Antilles, and from Antigua, St. Bartholomew, Anguilla, 

 and St. Martins of the Leeward Islands, the area as a whole has still 

 been scarcely more than touched. As the larger orbitoid genera were 

 heretofore almost unknown from the Lesser Antilles, it is fortunate 

 that the present collections are fairly rich in them, both in species and 

 in individuals, because from a study of these it has been possible to 

 make some general correlations with both continental America and 

 with Europe. The smaller Foraminifera are at present less valuable 

 for correlation purposes on account of the -lack of the sharp discrimina- 

 tion of the species representing them in adjacent regions. Some of the 

 Miocene species, however, afford a basis for definitely correlating some 

 West Indian exposures at least with Panama and the Coastal Plain 

 of the United States, collections from both of which I have described 

 in reports recently published. The smaller Foraminifera, because 

 they are very liable to exhibit differences in faunal assemblage, accord- 

 ing to different depths and different conditions of temperature, are of 

 value in supplying information on the physical conditions under which 

 sediments containing them were deposited. 



A summary statement regarding the collections and the general 

 characters of the f oraminif eral faunas from the different islands will be 

 given at once, so that the data may be available for the later discussion. 



LEEWARD ISLANDS. 



Collections, all made by T. W. Vaughan, in 1914, from four of the 

 Leeward Islands, viz, St. Bartholomew, Antigua, Anguilla, and St. 

 Martin, were submitted to me. Much of the material is more or less 

 indurated rock, and although it is very rich, especially in specimens of 

 large forms, the species present are comparatively few. Because of 

 their being firmly embedded in a matrix, the smaller species may be 

 discovered only by sections, which are necessarily more or less at ran- 

 dom. These reveal that smaller Foraminifera are numerous; but as a 

 rule they are very unsatisfactory as they do not allow surface charac- 

 ters, on which specific characters so largely depend, to be studied; and 

 from them it is usually possible to indicate little more than the genus 



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