212 DR. CARPENTER'S RESEARCHES ON THE FORAMINIFERA. 



43. Reproduction. The mode of Reproduction of the Foraminifera generally, is at 

 present involved in the deepest obscurity ; and there is little probability that it will 

 be fully elucidated by any other means, than continued observation of the animals in 

 their living state, such as may probably be best carried out with regard to the species 

 of our own seas by keeping them in Vivaria. In default of such observations, and as 

 a guide to further inquiry, I think it as well to state what has fallen under my own 

 notice. In many parts of the body of spirit-specimens of Orbitolite, especially, but 

 not solely, in the superficial cells, I have found the sarcode broken-up as it were into 

 little spherules, as represented in Plate IV. fig. 3 ; these spherules, however, do not 

 seem to possess any peculiar investment, nor does their sarcode appear to have 

 undergone any special change. Similar spherules are figured by Professor EHRENBERG 

 (op. cit.) in several of the cells of his Sorites orbiculus ; and Professor SCHULTZE has 

 recently (op. cit. pp. 26, 27) described bodies which seem to be of the same kind, 

 though more opake (probably through having a denser envelope), as frequently pre- 

 senting themselves in certain chambers of Rotalice, or even throughout the entire 

 series. I feel much inclined to believe that these bodies are gemmules, which, like 

 the zoospores of the Algae, are produced by a resolution of certain portions of the 

 substance of the organism into independent particles, which, spontaneously detaching 

 themselves, and escaping through the marginal pores of the disk, will go forth to lay 

 the foundation for new disks elsewhere. 



Besides these, however, I have more rarely met with certain other bodies, appa- 

 rently imbedded in the sarcode, which may be either gemmules in a later stage, 

 or may possibly be true ova ; these, represented in Plate IV. fig. 11, seem to exhibit 

 various stages of binary subdivision ; and they present a deep-red colour, even in 

 spirit- specimens. I can scarcely imagine that these can be vegetable organisms 

 that have been introduced through the marginal pores ; since they are much too 

 large to pass through these, without a great alteration in form ; and this would seem 

 to be incompatible with the firmness of their envelope. At g, fig. 1 1, is represented, 

 under the same magnifying power with the foregoing, an object which I have detected 

 in one of my vertical sections of the shell, where it occupies one of the superficial 

 cells, the cover of which is deficient. Now it is quite possible that this cell may 

 have been accidentally abraded, and that the object in question may have found its 

 way into it ab externo ; its position and aspect, however, seem to me much more 

 conformable to the idea, that it has been developed in the disk itself, and that it has 

 burst through the lid of the cell by its own enlargement, in preparation for its final 

 escape. And this view seems borne out by the fact, that I have frequently found a 

 few cells open on different parts of the surface of disks which did not appear to have 

 suffered any abrasion ; as if the rupture of their lids had taken place as an ordinary 



describe (in a future memoir) the structure and varieties of Nonionina, the nearest existing type to Nummulite, 

 and in my belief generically identical with it, I shall have occasion to show, that there is not only no proof of 

 the existence of such a limitation to its growth, but that there is strong evidence to the contrary. 



