14 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
M. Mereschowsky explained it thus: Living among the 
waste of the fish cannery, surrounded by an abundance of 
nutrient material—a sort of predigested breakfast food—this 
spectre of a diatom, not using its chloroptyll to manufacture 
its dinner, had lost the chloroptyll just as do the parasites 
among its kinsmen of the higher plants. 
Diatoms vary indefinitely in shape. Some are round, others 
oval, squarish, triangular, elliptical, rod-like, or boat-shaped. 
Fig. 4 
Micro Photograph by S. J. Keese 
One kind, Isthmia, very abundant on Pacific algw, looks like a 
fat little money wallet, with a decorated strap buckled around 
to keep in its valuable contents. Salt water has more of the 
round, or roundish, kind and the long forms are more com- 
mon in the fresh water. Figure 1, Arachnoidisecus, and Fig- 
ure 2, Aulocodiseus, are round fossil forms from Redondo 
Beach, and they show something of the pattern and arrange- 
ment of projections. Figure 3 is an artificial arrangement of 
eleven. This kind breaks up the white light and under a low 
power objective, with the slightest motion, change color and 
glow like the slumbering hues and fire of jewels. 
