156 MEMORANDA. 
not guess. Looking at it after about an hour I saw it had 
just got out of focus, and as I brought it in again, its sarcode 
was nearly all drawn within, the carapace showing but a 
small stream like a pencil. After awhile I saw it pro- 
truding again, but in a much smaller circular compass. I 
was thinking at first if it might have some relation with a 
Gromia, or the Ameba guttula, as reported by Pritchard, 
plate xxii, fig. 6 ; but I am rather inclined to connect it with 
Bailey’s exceptional amceboid Pamphagus, since its lorica or 
tunic is a good medium betwixt the rough carapace of the 
ordinary Difflugia and the soft and delicate silkwork-like of 
the Englyphes. If any of your readers have observed a like 
animal I should be glad to hear of it more diffusely. 
Another very strange form of animalcule I met with in 
examining a small bottle which Mr. Archer has been so kind 
as to send me from Ireland, was something like a king crab 
(the sword-tail Limulus polyphemus), or rather a minute fac- 
simile of the celebrated fossil ‘‘ Cephalaspis Lyellii,”’ with the 
only difference that its tail was bifurcated, and had two very 
delicate feelers or sensorial bristles at its head. But I hope 
that Mr. Archer will be able to give a better account of it in 
the proceedings of his “‘ Dublin Nat. Hist. Society,” if he 
has been lucky enough to meet with it.—J. G. 
Living (?) Organisms in Chalk.—Strangeasitmay appear, M.A. 
Béchamp, one of the most celebrated of French chemists, 
alleges that chalk contains an abundance of minute living 
cellular organisms, and in proof of this assertion he points to 
the known fermenting power of chalk, and offers also micro- 
scopic evidence of the presence of these minute bodies. Chalk 
is known to contain fossil foraminifera in such large quanti- 
ties that 100 grammes would furnish as many as 2,000,000 
specimens. But, says M. Béchamp, in addition to these, 
chalk undoubtedly contains other organisms more minute 
than any of the infusoria, and these, though perhaps millions 
of years old, are still living, Take, he says, from the centre 
of a piece of chalk a portion of the substance, crush it, and 
mix it with pure distilled water, and examine it with a high 
microscopic power, and you will see numerous minute bril- 
liant points exhibiting a peculiar trembling movement. That 
this movement is not what is termed Brownian, M. Béchamp 
considered to be proved by the facts:—(1) That these 
particles, when isolated, act as powerful ferments ; and (2) 
that when analysed they are found to consist solely of carbon, 
