166 Mr. W. Clark on the recent Foraminifera. 167 



division of nature. In this class the greatest deviations are the 

 polyparia of certain of the Nodosarice , improperly called Lagence, 

 as the L. Icevis and its variety L. amphora, and the L. striata 

 of authors and its numerous varieties, which undoubtedly have 

 their chambers piled on each other, and form polypiferous stems 

 varying in the number of the strangulations of separation of 

 one globe from another; these constrictions are often so in- 

 tense, as to afford the smallest possible, often doubtful perfo- 

 rations ; they taper from bulb to bulb, and perhaps may only be 

 hollow on the principle of the wheat straw, to afford increased elas- 

 ticity to the stems to withstand the agitation of the waters in 

 their natural habitats of fixity. When a stem is broken into frag- 

 ments, as I have seen in the Nodosaria Icevis, the Lagena Icevis 

 of authors, by the mere contraction of the drying of a solution 

 of gum arabic to fix it on a card, in consequence of the extreme 

 brittleness of the necks of the flask-shaped globules, the ter- 

 minus, or what conchologists term the aperture, will always be 

 found under the microscope to be formed, in fresh specimens, of 

 five or six rough-edged radiations, of a very different character 

 from the symmetrical ones of those polypi that have eight ten- 

 tacula, and the counterparts of these irregular radiations in shape 

 and number will be seen at the basal part of the same object ; a 

 very strong argument that these fragments have parted from 

 succeeding bulbs at the smallest part of the strangulation, or in 

 other words at the aperture, leaving the base of the bulb from 

 which it has been separated imperforate, and showing that the 

 cylinder of strangulation is only hollow up to that point in 

 which the principle of flexibility is involved. Conchologists have 

 always considered the long tapering tubes, often as long or longer 

 than the bulb itself, to be the aperture of an inclosed animal : 

 if they are right, it must become enveloped and die, having 

 first deposited the germ of the succeeding nodule. This un- 

 usual and extended form of the neck and aperture only exists, 

 I believe, in two species of the entire class of Foraminifera, the 

 Nodosaria Icevis and N. striata ; every other form rarely extends 

 its neck or aperture much beyond the bulb. These two very sin- 

 gular exceptions, combined with the extraordinary length of the 

 strangulations, almost amount to a demonstration, that the Nodo- 

 sa?^ striata, the only organism admitting of the slightest doubt, 

 falls into the same category as the N Icevis, of which I have seen 

 a stem of four united strangulations or chambers, and others of 

 two and three. I therefore think it not improbable that the orga- 

 nisms, Nodosaria Icevis and N. striata, are the frames of polyparia 

 forming stems of nodules, which, when fresh from the coral zone, 

 are always more or less incrusted, like many of the corallines, 

 with pulpy cretaceous matter that serves as a nidus for the mi- 



