96 Mr. H. J. Carter on Ramulina parasitica. 
fera closely allied to the subfamily Ramulinine, of which 
Dr. Brady has given several figures in his ‘ Challenger’ 
Report (Zoology, vol. ix. text, p. 587, pl. Ixxvi. figs. 22-28, 
1884) ; but being ‘‘ microscopic ” it is of course almost infi- 
nitely smaller than the specimens of the recent species (viz. 
1-15th inch) which Dr. Brady has described and delineated 
under the name of “22. globulifera,” as well as the fossil ones 
(viz. 1-16th inch) previously found in the Chalk of the north of 
Treland by Mr. J. Wright, and figured in the Report of the 
Belfast Nat. Hist. Field Club for 1873-4 (pl. i. figs. 19 
and 20). 
The appearance of this fossil in its reticulated form (fig. 1, 
Ff) also so much resembles that of the reticulated structure 
presented by similar phases of development in the Mycetozoa 
of de Bary (see M. C. (now Dr.) Cooke’s ‘ Myxomycetes of 
Great Britain,’ 1877, pls. iii., iv., and vill. figs. 24, 27, and 
82 respectively), that one cannot help thinking that the Fora- 
minifera must resemble them in other respects, especially in 
their stages of reproduction, if not in their elementary com- 
position, since many of them develop calcareous material to 
such an extent in their structure that Rostafinski, in his 
classification (‘ Monograph of the Mycetozoa,’ 1875), has made 
an order of them under the name ‘‘ Calcarew”” (Cooke, op. 
cit. p. 2), which de Bary has illustrated in Physarum leuco- 
phaceum (‘Morphologie und Biologie der Pilze,’ 1884, p. 469, 
fig. 191). 
Let us now compare the development of the spore or repro- 
ductive body of the Mycetozoa with that of the Foraminifera 
through the freshwater naked and testaceous Rhizopoda, 
adopting the same stages numerically in each to facilitate the 
comparison. 
Thus, (1) the spore of the Mycetozoa is spherical, varying 
about 1-4000th inch in diameter, consisting generally of a 
dark brown cortex filled with colourless granuliferous plasma ; 
(2) on germination the cortex bursts and the granuliferous 
plasma comes forth in the form of a colourless, monociliated, 
polymorphic body, possessing a nucleus and a contracting 
vesicle (see de Bary’s figures, op. cit. p. 454 &c.); (3) the 
cilium is retracted and the polymorphic body assumes the 
condition of an Amoeba; (4) after this the now wnciliated 
bodies flow together and thus become massed into a state 
which is called the ‘ plasmodium,” still presenting active 
polymorphism ; (5) this activity gradually ceases and a 
motionless condition follows under which the plasmodium 
subsides into a more or less flat cake-like form (in Athalium 
septicum &c.), when the whole of the interior passes from a 
