OF SOUTHERN INDIA. 
01 
Class, RIIIZOPODA on FORAMINIFERA. 
Like tlie Sponges the Rhyzopods are a mere organic fluid or viscose mass, with- 
out any special or permanent organs, hut their little shells, simple or chambered, 
compete in regularity,- exactness of proportion, beauty of form and of ornament- 
ation with almost anything else we know in the animal kingdom. The names of 
Ehrenberg, Schultze, Dujardin, Carpenter, and many others will for ever remain 
connected with the study of this class. For the fossil forms no one has greater 
merit than A. d’Orhigny and Prof. A. E. von Reuss ; the latter author having in 
1861 published* an elaborate Prodromus towards a natural system of the Forami- 
nifera, particularly with reference to the fossil forms, of which no other naturalist 
has examined a larger number. 
Prof. V. Reuss divides the entire class into two large divisions, according to 
the shell being porous or not. Of the next importance is considered the calcareous 
or silicious structure, etc. 
Our species belongs to the group with a porous shell, which is traversed by 
a complicated system of canals. 
Besides this single determinable species, I have only ohseiwcd a few' very im- 
perfect specimens of a Uotalia from the marly limestone of Chokanadapooram and 
one small, smooth Laejena from the sandy beds at Yermanoor, both belonging to the 
Arrialoor group. 
Family —NmniULITIDJE. 
Reuss, 1. cit., p, 389. 
Genus. — ORBITOIDES, eVOrhigny, 1847. 
Shell discoid or lenticular, with sharpened margins, composed of a central 
simple layer of spirally or concentrically arranged cells, connected by canals with 
each other, and superposed on both sides by several other layers of cells ; outer 
surface more or less rough, granular, or tubercular and jiorous. 
The species of the genus are found from the cretaceous epoch up to the pre- 
sent time. 
Orbitoides Faujasi, (DefranceJ. PI. XII, Figs. 3 — 5. 
Reuss in Sitzungsb. Akad., Wien, Math. Nat. Klasse, 1861, vol. xliv, pt. i, p. 309, (cum syn.). 
Shell discoid, varying from four to eight mm. in diameter, and one to three 
in thickness, sharpened at the periphery, sometimes irregularly bent ; on both sides 
equally convex, or nearly flat on one of them', sometimes w'ith a prominent central 
* Sitz. Ak., Wien, Math. Nat. Klasse, xliv, pt. i, p. 355. Scarcely a volume of either Sitzungsheriehte or 
Denkschriften of the Academy is published without some valuable coutribution to the fossils of this class. 
Q ( 193 ) 
