96 Mr. H. J. Carter oti Ramulina parasitica. 



fera closely allied to tlie subfamily Ramulininge, of which 

 Dr. Brady has given several figures in his ' Cliallenger ' 

 Report (Zoology, vol. ix. text, p. 587, pi. Ixxvi. figs. 22-28, 

 1884) ; but being " microscopic " it is of course almost infi- 

 nitely smaller than the specimens of the recent species (viz. 

 l-15th inch) which Dr. Brady has described and delineated 

 under the name of ^'B. globidifera,^^ as well as the fossil ones 

 (viz. l-16th inch) previously found in the Chalk of the north of 

 Ireland by Mr. J. Wright, and figured in the Report of the 

 Belfast Nat. Hist. Field Club for 1873-4 (pi. iii. figs. 19 

 and 20). 



The appearance of this fossil in its reticulated form (fig. 1, 

 yy ) also so much resembles that of the reticulated structure 

 presented by similar phases of development in the Mycetozoa 

 of de Bary (see M. C. (now Dr.) Cooke's ' Myxomycetes of 

 Great Britain,' 1877, pis. iii., iv., and viii. figs. 24, 27, and 

 82 respectively), that one cannot help thinking that the Fora- 

 minifera must resemble them in other respects, especially in 

 their stages of reproduction, if not in their elementary com- 

 position, since many of them develop calcareous material to 

 such an extent in their structure that Rostafinski, in his 

 classification (' Monograph of the Mycetozoa,' 1875), has made 

 an order of them under the name " Calcareee " (Cooke, op. 

 cit. p. 2) , which de Bary has illustrated in Physarum leuco- 

 phaceum (' Morphologic und Biologic der Pilze,' 1884, p. 469, 

 fig. 191). 



Let us now compare the development of the spore or repro- 

 ductive body of the Mycetozoa with that of the Foraminifera 

 through the freshwater naked and testaceous Rhizopoda, 

 adopting the same stages numerically in each to facilitate the 

 comparison. 



Thus, (1) the spore of the Mycetozoa is spherical, varying 

 about l-4000th inch in diameter, consisting generally of a 

 dark bro-\vn cortex filled with colourless granuliferous plasma ; 

 (2) on germination the cortex bursts and the granuliferous 

 plasma comes forth in the form of a colourless, monociliated, 

 polymorphic body, possessing a nucleus and a contracting 

 vesicle (see de Bary's figures, op. cit. p. 454 &c.) ; (3) the 

 cilium is retracted and the polymorphic body assumes the 

 condition of an Amoeba ; (4) after this the now wnciliated 

 bodies flow together and thus become massed into a state 

 which is called the " plasmodium," still presenting active 

 polymorphism ; (5) this activity gradually ceases and a 

 motionless condition follows under which the plasmodium 

 subsides into a more or less flat cake-like form (in u^thalium 

 sejpttcum &c.), when the wdiole of the interior passes from a 



