LOW LIFE. 21 



water, will yield him multitudes of Infusoria, Rhizopoda, and 

 the infantile stages of many of the higher groups of life. 



The Foraminifera are the minute creatures which have so 

 largely contributed to the formation of the enormous beds of 

 chalk we find in Surrey, Kent, Sussex, and other counties, 

 such as the explorations of the Challenger showed us are being 

 formed in the deep sea at the present time. So minute are 

 they that one hundred and fifty of them placed side by side 

 would not measure more than one inch, and of such insignifi- 

 cant creatures the chalk is almost entirely composed. What 

 are they? How are they fashioned? How do they live? 

 These questions probably occur to the reader, and I must do 

 my best to briefly answer them. 



There is a minute creature, plentiful in ditches and similar 

 accumulations of stagnant water into which decaying vegeta- 

 tion has fallen. It is a minute speck of animated jelly, without 

 form, substance, or limbs. There is, in fact, no closer analogy 

 than the speck of almost clear jelly, to which in some mysteri- 

 ous way life has been given. In the words of the late Dr. W. 

 B. Carpenter, who made a special study of these creatures : 

 " A little particle of homogeneous jelly * arranging itself into a 

 greater variety of forms than the fabled Proteus, laying hold 

 of its food without members, swallowing it without a mouth, 

 digesting it without a stomach, appropriating its nutritious 

 material without absorbent vessels or a circulating system, 

 moving from place to place without muscles, feeling without 

 nerves, propagating itself without genital apparatus, and not 

 only this, but in many instances forming shelly coverings for 

 symmetry and complexity not surpassed by those of any 

 testaceous animal." 



With the exception of the last three-and-twenty words the 

 above description refers to the A mceba and its allies ; but in 

 the Foraminifera we have a sort of advanced type of amaebae, 



* It is now known that this jelly-like material is not of so simple a character as 

 was supposed a few years since : the most modern microscopes prove it to be not 

 devoid of structure. 



