1864.] 



Messrs. Parker and Jones on Foraminifera, 



239 



demonstrated principles. It is of the nature of the case,|that with these 

 opinions the certain basis of the actual, and of what can be empirically 

 proved, is left. It must also not be forgotten that these conclusions only 

 give some sort of clue as to which of the present undecomposable bodies 

 are of more complicated, and which of simpler composition, and nothing 

 as to what the simpler substances are which are contained in the more 

 complicated. Consideration of the atomic heats may declare something 

 as to the structure of a compound atom, but can give no information as to 

 the qualitative nature of the simpler substances used in the construction of 

 the compound atoms. But even if these conclusions are not free from 

 uncertainty and imperfection, they appear to me worthy of attention in a 

 subject which is still so shroudedin darkness as the nature of the unde- 

 composed bodies." 



III. "On some Foraminifera from the North Atlantic and Arctic 

 Oceans, including Davis Strait and Baffin Bay.^^ By W. 

 Kitchen Parker, F.Z.S., and Professor T. Rupert Jones, 

 F.G.S. Communicated by Professor Huxley. Beceived April 

 26, 1864. 



(Abstract.) 



Having received specimens of sea-bottom, by favour of friends, from 

 Baffin Bay (soundings taken in one of Sir E. Parry's expeditions), from 

 the Hunde Islands in Davis Strait (dredgings by Dr. P. C. Sutherland), 

 from the coast of Norway (dredgings by Messrs. M'Andrew and Barrett), 

 and from the whole width of the North Atlantic (soundings by Commander 

 Dayman), the authors have been enabled to form a tolerably correct esti- 

 mate of the range and respective abundance of several species of Foramini- 

 fera in the Northern seas ; and the more perfectly by taking Professor 

 Williamson's and Mr. H. B. Brady's researches in British Foraminifera as 

 supplying the means of estimating the Foraminiferal fauna of the shallower 

 sea-zones at the eastern end of the great " Celtic Province," and the less 

 perfect researches of Professor Bailey on the North American coast, for the 

 opposite, or "Virginian" end, — thus presenting for the first time the 

 whole of a Foraminiferal fauna as a natural- history group, with its internal 

 and external relationships. 



The relative abundance or scarcity and the locations of the several species 

 and chief varieties are shown by Tables ; and their distribution in other 

 seas (South Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean 

 and Red Seas) is also tabulated ; and in the descriptive part of the memoir 

 notes on their distribution, both in the recent and the fossil state, are care- 

 fully given. 



In the description of the species and varieties there are observations 

 made on those forms which have been either little understood, hitherto 



