Rhizopoda of England and India. 281 



cles" or vacuoles burst and discharge themselves like the ordi- 

 nary contracting vesicle. 



Now, from Stein's having figured a chain of vacuoles round 

 his Actinophrys oculata, and my figures of this species being, 

 with this exception, identical with his — while the group fig. 3, 

 although assuming the form of A. Sol, has been assumed to be 

 but another form of A. oculata, and figs. 4 and 5, which I con- 

 sidered at the time they were sketched, and do now, as A. Sol, 

 present a marginal chain of vacuoles similar to those in Stein's 

 figure of A. oculata, — it seems to follow, that if all these Actino- 

 phryans are not different phases of the same species, the peri- 

 pheral layer of vacuoles at least is of no specific value, any more 

 than the presence or absence of the drop-like masses of sarcode 

 about the tentacula. I have already quoted a passage from 

 Claparede and Lachmann, in which they identify a species of 

 Actinophrys which they found in the North Sea at once with 

 A. Sol of the fresh, and Stein's A. oculata of the salt water. 



With these end the descriptions and figures of all the Actino- 

 phryans which came under my notice, from time to time, at 

 Bombay, that seem to me worth publishing. Let us now briefly 

 turn our attention to those which I have found in England. 



Plentiful as A. Eichhornii seems to be in England, I only met 

 with two large specimens of it in Bombay ; and when these 

 were delineated for my last plate on the freshwater llhizopoda, 

 which was published in January 1864, I had not had an oppor- 

 tunity of studying this species in England. 



Just afterwards, however (in December 1863), I accidentally 

 obtained a large supply of it from a pool of fresh water in the 

 neighbourhood of this place (Budleigh-Salterton), and took 

 advantage of the occasion to make the observations and sketches 

 which have enabled me to compile the fragment of the disk 

 represented in PI. XII. fig. 6. This, for comparison, has been 

 drawn upon the same scale as the other Actinophryans, by 

 which it will be observed that while the diameter of the latter 

 is but half an inch, that of the former is 8 inches, or sixteen 

 times as much, the real diameter of the smaller Actinophryans 

 varying from -jnroth to — J-o-th of an inch, and that of the largest 

 specimens of A. Eichhornii being full -g^th of an inch. All 

 have been drawn upon the scale of -rAj-th to y-rVrrth of an inch. 

 Thus we are enabled more easily to appreciate their relative dif- 

 ferences in point of size. 



The fragment, by mistake, was at first drawn upon a radius 

 of eight, instead of one of four inches; but as the error was 

 only in the circle, the latter has been reduced to its proper size, 

 which is all that is required. All the other detail, with the ex- 



