268 Mr. H. J. Carter on the Opaque Scarlet Spherules 



the Nummulite up to the summit of the disk, thus according 

 with the extremely prolific nature of these Rhizopodous 

 animals, as indicated by the accumulation of their tests in 

 deposits of bygone ages, as well as those of the present day, 

 in localities where they prevail. 



What relation the large opaque scarlet spherule has to the 

 smaller ones I am not able to say, nor is it my business here 

 to inquire. Suffice it to observe that it has not yet been 

 shown that sexual reproduction exists in the Foraminifera, on 

 which this difference in size may be thought to bear, however 

 clear it may be that some of the opaque scarlet bodies in their 

 living and consequently uncoloured state may become new 

 individuals. 



Another point worth noticing in the infiltrated Foraminifera 

 of the specimens from the Eocene of Western India to which 

 I have alluded is that they appear not only to have died in 

 the midst of their fecundity, as many of the chambers are 

 literally crammed with these spherules of one colour or 

 another, but from their wonderful state of preservation gene- 

 rally to have undergone the metamorphism of fossilization 

 before their soft parts had passed into dissolution. Some- 

 times, however, in some parts the red colouring-matter of the 

 scarlet spherules appears to have become diffused, as if the 

 material which takes the red colour in mineralization had 

 previously been in a diffused state. 



Although the Foraminifera taken in by Loftusia persica^ 

 Stoliczkiella, and Millarella do not present the brilliant colora- 

 tion generally which renders the different structures so clear 

 and impressive in the Wasna specimens, their forms are ren- 

 dered recognizable by the presence of the white shelly skele- 

 ton or test with the '^ opaque scarlet spherules " not only in 

 their cameral cavities, but scattered tlirough the mineralized 

 substance of all three fossil species, which, when living, appear 

 to have fed upon them so abundantly that in some parts the 

 structure is rendered absolutely red by their presence, at once 

 evidencing the great fertility of the Foraminifera, as before 

 stated, and the probable object for which they had been taken 

 in by the Loftusia. Neither is the colour influenced in this 

 lespect by tluit of the deposit in which they are found im- 

 bedded, for that of Loftusia perslca is in grey limestone and 

 that of MiUurella cantabrigiensis in chalk. 



In the other specimens of Millarella to which I have 

 alluded (footnote, p. 180 loc. cit.) the same kind of foraminiferal 

 detritus is present, but there are no " scarlet spherules," 

 from which it must be inferred that the tests were taken in and 

 fossilized under different circumstances, that is that they were 



