<S8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 



The importance of the results of Mr. Barnard's manipulative skill 



divides itself clearly and at once under three heads. First, the prac- 

 tical value of this method of examination to the pure systematist in the 

 determination of species. I understand that at present the expense of 

 the apparatus required is very great, but experience teaches us that this 

 is a matter which is likely to he solved by time, and that this is a diffi- 

 culty which will yield to the imperative laws of demand. 



We have seen demonstrated the internal structure of a foraminiferal 

 test which has defied the usual methods of transparent mounting and 

 critical illumination, and systematic zoologists will readily recognize the 

 paramount value of a method which enables them to diagnose the 

 internal structure of an organism of which, as frequently happens, only 

 a single specimen is forthcoming — a structure which otherwise cannot 

 be ascertained without the intervention of an exploratory operation 

 which, in common with some other exploratory operations, occasionally 

 destroys the patient. 



Second, by the methods which Mr. Barnard lias put before us the 

 study of the bionomics of those Protozoa which, like the Foraminifera, 

 are enclosed in an opaque shell, is for the first time rendered easy — 1 

 may say for the first time rendered possible. When we set out to study 

 by experiments a biological problem in the case of such organisms, our 

 only chance of arriving at a result has hitherto- been to gauge, as nearly 

 as we can, the moment at which the phenomenon has taken place inside 

 the test, and then to kill the animal and ascertain the progress of the 

 experiment or its result, by the extremely difficult and dangerous pro- 

 cess of decalcifying the organism and mounting the protoplasmic body 

 in some transparent medium. From an examination of the internal 

 structure of a dead shell such as Mr. Barnard has demonstrated to us, 

 to the examination of that shell in the living condition is but a step, a 

 long step perhaps, but one which we may confidently rely upon such 

 expert manipulators as Mr. Barnard to take when the need shall arise. 

 We shall then be able to observe, without killing the animal, the pro- 

 gress of many phenomena that have engaged the attention of rhizopodists, 

 and to find answers to questions which have hitherto defied any solution 

 that is not purely conjectural. To mention only one or two of such 

 problems, we may refer to the phenomenon of the absorption of the 

 internal septa in many genera, as for instance in the genus Polymorphina 

 which so long ago as 1883, engaged the attention of the late Dr. Alcock.* 

 and comparatively lately of Mr. Henry Sidebottom, | and the formation 

 of polythalamous young already invested with a calcareous test inside 

 the parent shell, as recorded by Earland in 11)05, and by us jointly on 

 several subsequent occasions. | We may not unreasonably look forward 

 to the elucidation by Mr. Barnard's method of the problem of the 

 growth of monothalamous arenaceous shells. I see no reason for doubt- 

 ing that this process is one parallel to that described by Professor Max 

 Verworn and Professor Minchin in the case of the fresh-water Rhizopoda 



* Proc. Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester, xxii. (1883) p. 67. 

 t Proc. Lit. and Phil. Soc. Manchester (1907) No. 9, p. 17. 

 t Journ. Quekett Micr. Club, ser. 2, ix. (1905) p. 222. See also Proc. R. Irish 

 Acad., xxxi. (1913) pt. 64, p. 119. 



