23 



namely, silex, extracted, in some way at present unexplained, either 

 from their food or the element in which they lived— the sea. These 

 exquisite habitations were perforated to allow for the extrusion of 

 the pseudo-podia, as they were called, to be sent out in all directions 

 to collect whatever was needed for nutriment or continuing the build- 

 ing up of their habitations. 



They were not confined, as was once thought, to fossil forms and 

 periods, but were to be dredged up living in the Mediterranean, the 

 North Sea— notably off Cuxhaven— the Pacific, and the Atlantic ; yet, 

 though the greatest care had been used in drawing them up through 

 the water, the mere friction or pressure generally caused the pseudo- 

 podia to shrink and collapse. According to Dr. Carpenter, the sarcode 

 substance did not always fill the shell, often occupying only the upper 

 part, and showed a tendency to a regular division into four lobes. 

 Some of the shells were spheres with smaller spheres like Chinese 

 balls within them ; these spheres were often connected by radiating 

 rods, sometimes prolonged into very delicate spines, b'ome of the 

 globes had lesser globes attached to them, with ovoid or conical pro- 

 longations ; others were star-shaped, with the spaces between the rays 

 filled in with a most beautiful network. 



Although they were almost as widely distributed and quite as 

 varied in their form as the foraminifera, yet they must in past times 

 geologically have been more numerous, as we found whole rocks com- 

 posed of their shells, mingled with the siliceous valves of diatoms ; 

 thus the chalks and marls of Sicily, Greece, and Oran, in Africa, and 

 the diatomaceous deposits, many feet thick, in Bermuda and Richmond 

 (Virginia), contained them in great variety ; but the great source of our 

 supply was from Cambridge and Chimborazo, in the island of Barba- 

 does, where immense masses of a chalk-like rock were found, composed 

 almost entirely of the siliceous shells of Polycystina. A supply of this 

 rock containing most lovely forms, had been sent by their kind friend 

 and member, Mr. T. Curties, of Holborn, for distribution that evening, 

 and he had also sent a couple of slides prepared by Topping and Cole, 

 from the same deposit, with a hope that some of the members might 

 be incited to emulation, and produce slides as good. 



Those who wished to prepare the material would find an account 

 how best to manipulate it by Mr. Furlong, in the first volume of the 

 "Miscroicopical Society's Transactions"' (new series), or in "Davis 



