The white chalk is well known to be largely composed of a few kinds of foraminifera, but the occurrence of the soft bodies of these animalcules in a fossil state was first discovered by me, in 1845, in chalk-flints, and was announced in a paper, read before the Geological Society, entitled, "_Notes of a Microscopical Examination of Chalk and Flint_."[118] This statement was regarded by some eminent palæontologists as so "startling and unsatisfactory," that I resumed the investigation, and communicated the result to the Royal Society, in a memoir "_On the Fossil Remains of the Soft Parts of Foraminifera discovered in the Chalk and Flint of the South-East of England_;"[119] and with the kind assistance of that able chemist and microscopist, Mr. Henry Deane, of Clapham Common, I obtained, by immersing chalk in dilute hydrochloric acid, and mounting the residue in Canada balsam, several specimens of the entire integuments of the bodies of Rotaliæ, as distinct as if recent! This fact is now admitted; and the experiment has been successfully repeated in India, by Mr. Carter, on the limestones of that country;[120] and in America, by Dr. Bailey, &c.[121] In some limestone recently collected by my eldest son, Mr. Walter Mantell, in the Middle Island of New Zealand, and which, like our cretaceous strata, is almost entirely made up of foraminifera, I have detected the soft parts of the bodies of Rotaliæ in the cells of the fossil shells, as distinctly as in the chalk of England; and two of the species appear to be identical with European forms. [Footnote 118: These "Notes" were withdrawn, and published in the Annals of Natural History for August, 1845.] [Footnote 119: Published in Philos. Trans. Part iv. for 1846.] [Footnote 120: "On the existence of Beds of Foraminifera, recent and fossil, on the South-East of Arabia," by H. J. Carter, Esq. Assistant Surgeon, Bombay. Proceedings of the Bombay Asiatic Society, 1848.] [Footnote 121: A remarkable foraminiferous deposit of chalk detritus occurs at Charing, in Kent, and was first examined and described by William Harris, Esq.; it contains immense numbers of many kinds of foraminifera, and of the cases or shells of entomostraca, of the genus Cytherina, with spicules of sponges, &c.--See Wonders of Geology, vol. 1. p. 324.] M. D'Orbigny gives the following summary of the distribution of the known fossil species of Foraminifera:-- There are 228 species in the Tertiary deposits of Vienna alone, of which twenty-seven species are known living in the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Foraminifera are unknown in the Silurian and Devonian formations. One species only is known in the Carboniferous system of Russia, the _Fusulina cylindrica_. Jurassic or Oolitic formation Genera 5 Species 20 Cretaceous " 34 " 280 Tertiary " 56 " 450 Living in the present seas " 68 " 1,000