1892.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. Ill 



Radiolari.i : Tlieir Life-History and Their Classification. 



Bv Rev. FRED'K B. CARTER, 



MONTCLAIR, N. J. 



[Reat! before the Department of Microscopy, BrooUlyii Institute, February 16, 1892. J 

 \Contiiiued from fage 0^.~\ 



The material is now ready for examination. But let no one 

 imagine that this is the work of a moment. My impression is 

 that less care is taken in the case of the Radiolarja than in that 

 of almost any other class of microscopic objects which might be 

 mentioned. 



In a dozen years I have seen hardh' more than a dozen slides 

 of polycystina exhibited. Search among the cabinets of amateurs 

 and you will find that while they are overstocked with diatoms 

 there are scarcelv any slides at all of polycystina. I asked a 

 friend of mine to bring me all the slides he could find of these 

 forms in an unusually large and fine collection of microscopic 

 objects, and he brought me just four. Yet I am sure that the slides 

 of diatoms and the histological slides in that collection must run 

 up into the hundreds. And what of those four.? Three were 

 opaque mounts, and in one of these the forms were mounted in 

 such a deep cell as to be beyond the reach of an ordinary ;J-inch 

 objective ; only one was mounted as a transparent object and that 

 was a slide o{ inoving polycystina, utterly useless for close exam- 

 ination with a high power. But the reason is perfectly plain. 

 As a rule no one thinks of observing them closely or with a high 

 power. At least that has l)een my experience, for I never saw 

 any of them under a power higher than a half-inch until I began 

 to make a definite study of them for myself. They are regarded 

 as simply pretty opaque objects, to be displayed with the binocu- 

 lar and the f or \ inch ; to be viewed as a whole for a moment 

 or two and then cast aside in favor of some other interesting ob- 

 ject. Of course, for show objects, two or three slides are as good 

 as a hundred and the amateur sees no reason for owning more. 

 And in fact he cannot get any variety if he would from the dealers 

 on this side of the water at least. It is rare to meet with a slide 

 for sale from any locality but Barbadoes. I secured one from the 

 Nicobar Islands, but it was the only one the dealer had, and I do 

 not remember ever to have seen another for sale from that locality, 

 and while there are plenty from Barbadoes they are apparently all 

 alike, at any rate so much so that one is not disposed to purchase 

 many at half a dollar apiece. But they are not all alike. One 

 slide will have several forms not on another, and while they are 

 too costly to buy by the dozen, what is to hinder one from making 

 up a couple of dozen of strewn slides of his own, or from picking 

 out the difterent forms and mounting them separately.'' They 

 are no harder to pick out than diatoms, and many an amateur 

 has become expert enough for that. Let him go to work at tiie 

 Barbadoes earth and he will be surprised to see what a variety 



