1892.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 143 



Rjidiolaria : Their Life-History and Their Classification. 



By Riiv. FRED'K B. CARTER, 



MONTCLAIR, N. J. 



\^Conthiucd from page 67.] 



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 tlie case of the Radiolaria than in that of 

 almost any other class of microscopic objects which might be 

 mentioned. 



In a dozen years I have seen hardly 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 scarcely 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 ^-inch olijective ; only 

 one was mounted as a transparent object and that was a slide of 

 wo':7V^_^" polycystina, utterly useless for close examination 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 been 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 binocular and the \ or ^ inch ; 

 to be viewed as a ivJiole for a moment or two and then cast aside 

 in favor of some other interesting object. Of course, for show 

 objects, two or three slides are as good as a hundred and the ama- 

 teur 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 dif- 

 ferent 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 the Barbadoes earth and 

 he will be surprised to see what a variety there is in that deposit 

 as he mounts one after another. If he is at all thorough about it 



