166 Mr. W. Clark on the recent Foraminifera. 167 
division of nature. In this class the greatest deviations are the 
polyparia of certain of the Nodosarie, improperly called Lagene, 
as the L. levis and its variety L. amphora, and the L. striata 
of authors and its numerous varieties, which undoubtedly have 
their chambers piled on each other, and form polypiferous stems 
varying in the number of the strangulations of separation of 
one globe from another; these constrictions are often so in- 
tense, as to afford the smallest possible, often doubtful perfo- 
rations; they taper from bulb to bulb, and perhaps may only be 
hollow on the principle of the wheat straw, to afford increased elas- 
ticity to the stems to withstand the agitation of the waters in 
their natural habitats of fixity. When a stem is broken into frag- 
ments, as I have seen in the Nodosaria levis, the Lagena levis 
of authors, by the mere contraction of the drying of a solution 
of gum arabic to fix it on a card, in consequence of the extreme 
brittleness of the necks of the flask-shaped globules, the ter- 
minus, or what conchologists term the aperture, will always be 
found under the microscope to be formed, in fresh specimens, of 
five or six rough-edged radiations, of a very different character 
from the symmetrical ones of those polypi that have eight ten- 
tacula, and the counterparts of these irregular radiations in shape 
and number will be seen at the basal part of the same object; a 
very strong argument that these fragments have parted from 
succeeding bulbs at the smallest part of the strangulation, or in 
other words at the aperture, leaving the base of the bulb from 
which it has been separated imperforate, and showing that the 
cylinder of strangulation is only hollow up to that pomt in 
which the principle of flexibility is involved. Conchologists have 
always considered the long tapering tubes, often as long or longer 
than the bulb itself, to be the aperture of an inclosed animal: 
if they are nght, it must become enveloped and die, having. 
first deposited the germ of the succeeding nodule. This un- 
usual and extended form of the neck and aperture only exists, 
I believe, in two species of the entire class of Foraminifera, the 
Nodosaria levis and N. striata; every other form rarely extends 
its neck or aperture much beyond the bulb. These two very sin- 
gular exceptions, combined with the extraordinary length of the 
strangulations, almost amount to a demonstration, that the Nodo- 
saria striata, the only organism admitting of the slightest doubt, 
falls into the same category as the N. levis, of which I have seen 
a stem of four united strangulations or chambers, and others of 
two and three. I therefore think it not improbable that the orga- 
nisms, Nodosaria levis and N. striata, are the frames of polyparia 
forming stems of nodules, which, when fresh from the coral zone, 
are always more or less incrusted, like many of the corallines, 
with pulpy eretaceous matter that serves as a nidus for the mi- 
