384 
NUMMULTTE. 
witli floating swarms of these extinct Mollnsks, 
thick as the countless myriads of Beriie and 
Clio Borealis that now crowd the waters of the 
polar seas.* 
The Nummulites, like the Nautilus and Am- 
monite, are divided into air chambers, which 
served the office of a float ; but there is no en- 
largement of the last chamber which could have 
contained any pai’t of the body of the animal. 
The chambers are very numerous, and minutely 
divided by transverse plates ; but are without a 
* We have an analogy to this supposed state of crowded po- 
pulation of Nummulites in the ancient sea, in the marvellous 
fecundity of the northern ocean at the present time. It is 
stated by Cuvier, in his memoir on the Clio Borealis, that in 
calm weather, the surface of the water in these seas swarms with 
such millions of these mollusks (rising for a moment to the air 
at the surface, and again instantly sinking towards the bottom), 
that the whales can scarce open their enormous mouths without 
gulping in thousands of these little gelatinous creatures, an inch 
long, which, together with Medusee, and some smaller animals, 
constitute the chief articles of their food ; and we have a farther 
analogy in the fact mentioned in Jameson’s Journal, vol. »• 
p. 12. “ That the number of small Medus-oe in some parts of 
the Greenland seas is so great, that in a cubic inch, taken up 
at random, there are no less than 64. In a cubic foot this will 
amount to 110,592; and in a cubic mile (and there can be no 
doubt of the water being charged with them to that extent), the 
number is such, that allowing one person to count a million in a 
week, it would have required 80,000 persons, from the creation 
of the world, to complete the enumeration. ” — See Dr. Kidd s 
admirable Introductory Lecture to a course of Comparative Ana- 
tomy, Oxford, 1824, p. 35. 
