THE LOWER FORMS OF LIFE. 59 



but to Professor Huxley is due the credit of bringing them promi- 

 nently into notice in the year 1851. Since that time they have 

 been studied by Mtiller, Claparede and Lachmann, Carpenter, 

 Kolliker, and others. 



Mr. Huxley, in his paper ("Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History/' Second Series, December, 1851), thus describes the locus 

 in quo of the Radiolaria : " In all seas, whether extra-tropical or 

 tropical, through which the Rattlesnake sailed, I found floating at 

 the surface the peculiar gelatinous bodies which are the subject of 

 the present communication. They were the most constant of all the 

 various products of the towing-net, which was rarely used without 

 obtaining some of them, and which sometimes for days would 

 contain hardly anything else." And he thus describes their nature : 

 " The Thalassicolla (thalassa the sea, kolla jelly, glue) is found 

 in transparent, colourless, gelatiniform masses of various forms 

 elliptically elongated, hourglass-shaped, contracted in several places, 

 or spherical, varying in size from an inch downwards ; showing no 

 evidence of contractility, nor any power of locomotion, but floating 

 passively on the surface of the water." 



Professor Huxley's excellent paper was written fifteen years ago, 

 and he says : " The extreme simplicity of structure of these creatures 

 was more puzzling to me than any amount of complexity would 

 have been. The difficulty of perceiving their relations with those 

 forms of life with which I was familiar gave me rather a distaste to 

 the study of them, and, as I now perceive, has rendered my account 

 of their organisation far less complete than I could wish it." 



Since this paper was written some points which were obscure to 

 Mr. Huxley have been cleared up, as, for instance, their power of 

 contraction. Professor Kolliker (Icones Histiologicae) writes : " The 

 Radiolaria are, in all probability, a series of many-celled animals, 

 the bodies of which consist of the contractile substance by which 

 the Rhizopoda are characterised, and, like them, having similar 

 pseudopodia. Peculiar to the Radiolaria is a capsule in the centre 

 of the contractile body, and the appearance, both in this capsule 

 and throughout the body, of many distinctly cellular elements. 

 Many Radiolaria possess a peculiar skeleton of a needle-like spiculee 

 of flint, and, more rarely, of an organic horny substance, similar in 

 consistency to sponge." 



Upon these grounds, then, this distinguished histologist has placed 

 the Radiolaria above the Foraminifera in the scale of living things. 



And what, then, are these Radiolaria ? I will answer this ques- 

 tion by quoting a passage from the able review of Kolliker's work 

 in the Quarterly Journal of Science, vol. ii. p. 534 : 



" And what exquisite forms do these Radiolaria exhibit ! we feel 



