TAXONOMIC NOTES ON THE SPECIES FIGURED BY H. B. BRADY IN HIS 

 REPORT ON THE FORAMINIFERA DREDGED BY H.M.S. CHALLENGER 



DURING THE YEARS 1873-1876' 



PREFACE 



Henry Bowman Brady, 1835-1891, was the greatest of the English authorities on the Foraminifcra. 

 His "Challenger Report," published in 1884, is one of the most frequently cited works on this group, and 

 his illustrations are among the most accurate ever published. It has long been the main source of our 

 knowledge on Recent Foraminifera, and the literature abounds with references to his figures under a 

 great diversity of names. As opposed to the Continental school (d'Orbigny, Reuss, Karrer, and others) 

 he held a very broad view on generic and specific concepts, and included many fossil species in synonymy 

 with his Recent forms. With the growing tendency toward minute differentiation of species in an attempt 

 to refine geologic correlation and emphasize environmental changes in living faunas, both his genera 

 and his species have been progressively split into new and more restricted forms. This has greatly re- 

 duced the value of his figures to those workers who do not have access to an extensive library, and even 

 then much time is necessarily lost in checking taxonomic changes. 



H. E. Thalmann attempted to remedy this in his paper "Nomenclator zu den Tafeln 1 bis 115 in 

 H. B. Brady's Werk ueber die Foraminiferen der Challenger E.xpedition, London 1884" and subsequent 

 supplements (see Bibliography). The value of these was unfortunately lessened by the absence of any indi- 

 cation of the authors of the changes and where the references could be found. A further difficulty in mak- 

 ing full use of Brady's plates lies in the absence of localities for the figured specimens. Brady included 

 specimens from widely separated regions in the same species, whereas later work indicated that in many 

 cases Pacific Ocean material was specifically distinct from that of the Atlantic Ocean, Polar region forms 

 different from those of more temperate and tropical oceans, etc. This difificulty was realized by W. L. F. 

 Nuttall, who checked the figured specimens in the Brady collections in the Zoological Department in 

 Cambridge and in the British Museum (Natural History) and published a list of all localities he could 

 verify in 1928 and 1931 (see Bibliography). The situation was thus considerably improved, but even 

 if a student had access to the original Challenger Report (a work of considerable rarity), he had to work 

 with the various papers of Thalmann and Nuttall to ascertain the latest suggested name and locality 

 of any figured specimen. In addition, each year brought further taxonomic changes, which in many cases 

 confused the issue to a point where several names had been given to the same figure, owing to a lack 

 of knowledge of the literature. 



During the past twenty years the writer has endeavoured to trace the bibliographic references to 

 all the changes listed by Thalmann, and to add these and many subsequent references to his copy of 

 Brady's Atlas. The localities given by Nuttall were also added, in order to concentrate all our avail- 

 able data in a readily accessible form. It would appear that several of the species figured arc nomina 

 nova which have been named here. A number of the forms figured by Brady, and as yet undescribed, have 

 been indicated but have not been named, for the writer has not had the opportunity to study Brady's 

 specimens in order to prepare adequate descriptions and to designate types. In many cases it has been 

 possible to check the taxonomic changes suggested by other authors from a study of topotypes selected 

 from original "Challenger" material, but it should be stated that the present notes are of a bibliographic 

 nature and in no sense a critical revision of the "Challenger Report." 



It is hoped that the present notes, with a reissue of Brady's plates, will prove of value to many workers 

 who do not have ready access to the original, nor to the papers of Thalmann and Nuttall, and may enable 

 workers primarily interested in ecology and geographical distribution to avoid some of the many taxo- 

 nomic pitfalls which await the student of the Foraminifera. The writer is deeply indebted to H. M. 

 Stationery Office for permission to reproduce the original plates of the Challenger Atlas, to Shell Develop- 

 ment Company for permission to publish the accompanying notes, and to Mrs. Julia G. Breeding of 

 Shell Development Company for her assistance in editing and proof-reading the original manuscript. 

 He also wishes to express his gratitude to Dr. Helen Tappan of the Smithsonian Institution, to Dr. 

 Alfred Loeblich, Jr. of the United States National Museum, and to Miss Frances L. Parker of Scripps 

 Institution of Oceanography for valuable criticism and helpful information on a number of species. 



' Manuscript received at Society Headquarters, January 10, 1957. 



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