136 



MEDITERRANEAN PROVINCE. 



bata and Quinqueloculina subrotunda, which have 

 seemingly a world-wide distribution. 



M. Alcide D'Orbigny obtained forty- three species 

 of Foraminifers from two small parcels of sand 

 collected at Orotava and Teneriffe ; of these, seven 

 are well-known Mediterranean species ; four are 

 West Indian ; the remaining thirty-two species are 

 to be considered as peculiar to the Canaries ; it 

 is most probable, however, that many of these are 

 common to the African coast. With the exception 

 of one form, for which M. D'Orbigny created the 

 'genus Webbina, the aspect of the whole assem- 

 blage is European ; all the genera are common in 

 the Mediterranean, and many species, though con- 

 sidered to be distinct, are evidently very closely 

 allied to well-known Mediterranean forms. 



Of the habits of the living Rhizopods we as yet 

 know but little ; some are free, some live attached 

 to marine plants ; the great bulk of described and 

 figured forms of Foraminifers have been found in 

 coast-line sand. Such, however, cannot have been 

 the condition of accumulation of those thick ter- 

 tiary beds of Italy or France, so largely composed 

 of these organisms. Many of the species which 

 are found fossil in the Italian deposits occur, also, 

 in the coast-sand of the Adriatic, and we must sup- 

 pose that their light exuviae are mostly carried out- 

 wards, and deposited in the tranquil depths of zones 

 beyond those in which the animals themselves 

 had lived. Ed. Forbes observed that ForaminiferQ 



