great delicacy it was most difficult to obtain really living subjects, as even the passing through 

 the water, in hauling up the apparatus used in dredging them caused death, and when that 

 occurred the pseudopodia immediately collapsed, the sarcode substance became flaccid, and 

 little more of the vital economy of the organisms could be observed. 



The late Professor W. J. Bailey also records some specimens as occurring among his deep-sea 

 soundings in the Sea of Kamschatka ; he speaks of their "organic contents" but does not state 

 whether obtained in a living state. 



In the stomachs of the Salpaj, which form so large a portion of the food of whales, shoals of 

 Polycystins are found, which have in their turn served as food to the Salpaj. In a fossil state 

 Polycystins have heen found in many parts of the world ; those figured in the accompanying 

 Monograph, are fi-om a sort of chalky earth found in various locahties in Barbados, where Sir 

 Robert Schomburgk describes it as having been forced up by volcanic action, through the 

 coral reefs of which the island is formed, from the deep bottom of some ancient ocean, where 

 countless ages ago they may have enjoyed their gift of the power of abstracting pure Silex from 

 the water, and, while in a plastic state, weaving it into their elegant glass corslets, — then 

 lajdno- down their skeletons to form part of that incalculably vast bed of ocean-deposits, of 

 which some infinitesimally small fraction occasionally comes under the microscopic ken of man, 



^to shew us how the minutest and humblest atoms have yet their allotted par.t in fulfilling the 



Laws of the Great Creator. 



Professor Ehrenberg, in a discourse delivered before the Berlin Royal Academy of Sciences, 

 says, speaking of these fossils from the rocks of Barbados (which he calls Siliceous Polygastrica) 

 "for these organisms constitute part of a chain which, though in the individual link it be 

 microscopic, yet in the mass is a mighty one, connecting the Life-phenomena of distant ages of 

 the earth, and proving that the dawn of organic nature co-existent with us, reaches farther 

 back in the history of the earth than had hitherto been suspected. The microscopic organisms 

 are very inferior in individual energy to lions and elephants, but in their united influences they 

 are far more important than all these animals." 



Professor Owen (in his "Palasontology," 1862,) further remai-ks "if it ever be permitted to 

 man to penetrate the mystery which enshrouds the origin of organic force in the wide-spread 

 mud beds of fresh and salt waters, it will be, most probably, by experiment and observation on 

 the atoms which manifest the shnplest conditions of life." 



P. S. B. 



Croft Lodge, 



Januain), 1862. 



