NOTES ON RETICULARIAN EHIZOPODA. 299 



digestive cavities of Ophiocomee living at the bottom at great 

 depths. 



7. The testimony of many experienced observers (Ehren- 

 berg, Parker and Jones, Wallich, and others) that the 

 Globigerince in the small soundings which they had for 

 examination contained the sarcode bodies, the colour and 

 nature of which each has described, with which statement 

 my own results from the material taken in the " tow-net 

 attached to trawl" generally agree. 



It may be that some of these arguments bear an explana- 

 tion other than that which appears the most natural one. 

 The only facts that I know o{,per contra, are — 



1. The dredged or trawled material consists of nothing but 

 dead or empty shells. 



2. Dredged specimens from great depths have never been 

 observed to extend their pseudopodia. 



The first of these propositions, as I have already shown, 

 scarcely, in reality, affects the question. In respect to the 

 second, it is to be observed that the same holds good of the 

 arenaceous Rhizopoda, which we know live at the bottom. 

 Neither Avill any one who has had mucli experience in hand- 

 ling shallow-water Foraminifera, and knows the difhculty 

 there often is in inducing a common Rotalia to extend its 

 pseudopodia after being taken out of an aquarium and put 

 into a watch glass, wonder much at the want of this particular 

 evidence of life in specimens whose whole environment has 

 been thus suddenly changed — released from enormous 

 pressure and brought from darkness into strong light. 



In addition to its employment at the surface of the sea, the 

 tow-net was used by the " Challenger" naturalists suspended 

 at different depths in the water, and pelagic Foraminifera 

 were collected with other forms of animal life hundreds of 

 fathoms below the surface. I confess, therefore, that I can 

 see no anomaly in the supposition that organisms so simply 

 constituted as this group of Protozoa maybe equally at home 

 at the surface and at the bottom of the ocean. 



