40 MICROSCOPICAL OBJECTS FOUND 



to a certain extent, there is a point at which this 

 stops, and then the still softer enclosed tissues 

 dry up towards it, merely increasing its thickness 

 in a small degree, and showing that these inner 

 textures are little more than a gelatinous fluid. 

 Were the whole of the soft animal homogeneous, 

 it would, in drying, either accumulate at some 

 one point of each cell, a small hardened mass, or 

 it would closely invest the whole inner surface of 

 the calcareous cell ; but, as we have seen, it 

 does neither the one nor the other, thus indi- 

 cating that the inner membrane is the true skin 

 of the animal, which invests and holds together 

 its softer and more fluid portions, and which is 

 itself enclosed and protected by a still harder 

 calcareous shell. 



1 am aware that Milne Edwards has come to a 

 difi*erent conclusion with reference to an allied 

 genus of Zoophytes, (Eschara*) but in the detail 

 of his observations, he mentions some facts which 

 indicate a very decided difference between these 

 and the Foraminifera, aff'ording another illustra- 

 tion of the variety of the plans upon which the 



* Aunales des Sciences Nat. Part Zool. Vol. i. p. 25, 31. 



