June 1, 1SC7.] 



IIARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



129 



which would appear most extraordinary and amus- 

 ing to our modem ideas ; there is, it is only fair to 

 add, a considerable amount of really useful informa- 

 tion in the volume. But, without actually reading 

 extracts from works of this nature, I believe few 

 would credit the fact that such preposterous state- 

 ments were prevalent even " a century ago." 



E. Allen. 



FORAMINIFER A. 



IT is not a little remarkable that whilst the shells 

 of foraminifers are amongst the common objects 

 most familiar to microscopists, and thousands of 

 miles of the soft beds of our deepest oceans, and 

 whole mountains and great tracks of land — the 

 solidified mud of the oceans of geologic ages— are 

 almost entirely composed of the carapaces and debris 

 of these tiny beings in uncountable myriads, that 

 hardly any one knows anything about them in their 

 living state, and very few naturalists even can be 

 said to be at all reliably acquainted with the 

 proper history of the various species, still less with 

 their actual habits. 



What is a foraminifer ? may indeed be easily 

 answered. It is one of the very lowest forms of 

 life. It belongs to the class of Rhizopods, merely 

 gelatinous animals of which the Amoeba is the 

 simplest form. This curious spec of living jelly is 

 devoid of any visible organization, has no perceptible 

 muscles or nerves, no head, no mouth, neither arms 

 nor legs— a mere minute mass of sarcode. And yet 

 life is there— life in one of the most mysterious of 

 its many forms and manifestations. That thin flesh, 

 seemingly all on the run like limpid starch, quivers 

 to the sensation of touch, contracts with the pain 

 of injury, protrudes long filaments as arms to seek 

 for food, perhaps more tender than even its own 

 transparent substance, or uses these thread-like 

 limbs— pseudopods, as the Greek-and-Latin-loving 

 savans have termed them — as cables to pull itself 

 along. Whether these Amoebae even have the 

 thinnest of skins is more than any one could swear 

 to, though of course they ought to have ; but if any 

 kind of these animals possesses no other difference 

 than that of the power of consolidating calcareous, 

 siliceous, or horny matter around it, and turning its 

 skin into a shelly house, it becomes at once a poly- 

 cyst in or a foraminifer. ; In the main, if it has a 

 siliceous shell, it is the former ; if a calcareous shell, 

 perforated with a lot of little holes for the protru- 

 sion of the pseudopods, the latter. There are, how- 

 ever, imperforate foraminifers and perforate poly- 

 cystins, and these of course have mimetic resem- 

 blances to each other. Naturally, however, the 

 imperforate foraminifers have more affinity with the 

 polycystins than the perforate polycystins have with 

 the foraminifera. We cannot here, however, enter 



into details of affinities or classification, for the main 

 object of this article is to suggest work required to 

 be done, rather than to teach what has been accom- 

 plished. 



Two subjects require at the hands of naturalists and 

 students full consideration and attention : a general 

 review of the accepted classification into families, 

 genera, and species ; and a careful and actual investi- 

 gation of the living forms and their actual stages of 

 development. The one question involves the other ; 

 and we must start with an hypothesis. We must pre- 

 sume that the primitive typical form of a foraminifer 

 is a simple single sphere, and that this primitive form 

 is the first rudimentary stage of every species, how- 

 ever complex may be its ultimate mature condition. 



Shut up in its stony cell, then, how will it propa- 

 gate its kind ? The mass of sarcode, constantly 

 fed, increases, exudes ; and the exuded mass ulti- 

 mately forms another individual, which coats itself, 

 and builds another house next door to its parent's, 

 and the two have become a pair of semi-detached 

 Amoeban villas. Nutrition of the sarcode still goes 

 on, and exudation again takes place ; another house 

 is added, and yet another and another, until in the 

 order of generation a street of Amoeban residences 

 is built. All this is very simple, and one would 

 hardly have preconceived the possibility of much 

 variety in the results of a process so extremely 

 rudimentary. And yet species and varieties more 

 numerous than those of any other single order of 

 animals abound, and the class of foraminifers is 

 prolific in variety and beauty of forms. But all this 

 variety and beauty are due entirely to the way in 

 which each particular species builds its house, and 

 the plan upon which it forms its street. 



Let us explain ourselves by a selection of actual 

 examples. Some foraminifers are perfectly round 

 and solitary, as the membranous Ground, and the 

 calcareous shelled Orbulina. Other kinds will put 



Fig. 104. Fig. 10.5. 



Orbulina universa. Lagenu glubosu. 



Fig. 106. 

 L. caudata. 



on shapes of every modification a viscous sphere is 

 susceptible of. One sort, the Oolina, puts on a form 



Fig. 107. 

 L. sulcata, young. 



Fig. 108. 

 L. sulcata, adult. 



Fig. iog. 



L. malo. 



something like an elongated globule of glass broken 

 off from the stick of the blower, with a short bit of 

 the tag attached. Another of this group, the Lagena, 



