Mr. W. Clark on the recent Foraminifera. 169 
these minute objects, I can truly say that this idea is wholly 
without foundation if the pursuit is properly conducted, and that, 
on the contrary, it is materially strengthened by the use of pro- 
perly adapted glasses even of high powers ; and in proof I state 
that twenty years ago I used spectacles, but the continued and 
daily examination of these minutiz has so greatly increased the 
power of vision, that I now read the smallest type without diffi- 
culty and without aid. The great point to be attended to is not 
to use a power that in the least exceeds the necessity, not to 
continue the exercise of vision too long, and never by artificial 
light, and to reserve the high powers of certain lenses and the 
microscope for important investigations of very moderate conti- 
nuance: the really observant eye seizes at a glance the intelli- 
gence required, whilst strained, poring, and long optical exertions 
are delusive and unsatisfactory, and produce those fanciful ima- 
ginations of objects which have really no existence. The proper 
time for research after microscopic objects is for one hour after 
breakfast, when we are in the fittest state for exertion. 
The very minute Foraminifera are always in fine sand, and the 
best way to find them is to take from the parcel of sand only as 
much as will lie on the point of a very small penknife blade, 
spreading it by a slender-pointed cedar stick on a large card, 
covered with dull black paper, when, with a proper lens, the 
objects by their symmetry and beauty are at once distinguished, 
and gathered up by a sable brush into proper receptacles. This 
apparently slow but sure mode of finding these minutie by 
purely optical exertions will produce a greater supply than by 
the wholesale immersion of sand in water and the resulting 
collection of a few buoyant objects ; for after all that can be done 
by this mode, the sand, when abandoned, will then produce three 
times the number that have been acquired otherwise. In the 
search of shells of one-tenth inch diameter, perhaps the plan of 
immersion may succeed well. 
Having disposed of two of the greatest drawbacks in the in- 
vestigation of the Foraminifera, it only remains, as concisely as 
possible, to conclude the present paper by some remarks illus- 
trative of my views in being anxious to rescue this branch of 
natural history from its present, I may say, retrograde position, 
as regards the knowledge of the animal. 
The field of the British testaceous mollusca has been for many 
years so sedulously cultivated, that although its products are not 
yet exhausted, they have nevertheless become so much dimi- 
nished, as is proved by the increasing far-betweens in the disco- 
very of new species, as to render it almost a matter of necessity 
to look out for “fresh woods and pastures new ;” and where 
can we find a more delightful resource, partaking so much of the 
