370 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
in which the water of the Nile was as it were 
“turned to blood, and all the fish died,” has been 
attributed to a phenomenal development of these 
animalcules, which, on dying, polluted and putre- 
fied the water. Instances of fishes being destroyed 
in vast quantities through a like agency through- 
out even extensive sea-areas have been occasionally 
recorded. While these pages are going to press 
an account has appeared in an American journal 
of red water caused by these flagellate animalcules, 
which occurred last July for an extent of at least 
200 miles along the coast of California, producing 
with their decomposition a most sickening odour, 
and the death of shoals of fishes, octopods, sea- 
cucumbers, and other organisms. 
4 Next to the Flagellates come the ROOT-FOOTED 
Photo by HW’. Saville-Kent, F.Z.5.J [Milford-on-Sea ANIMALCULES, which possess no mouth and no 
POLYCYSTS hairs or lashes, but progress by pushing out lobes 
Flinty-shelled organisms of microscopic dimensions. The living of their jelly-like substance in any desired direction, 
ce REG ee a i romwhich into which the rest of the body flows. Food is 
picked up at any point with which an acceptable 
morsel may be brought in contact. The little gelatinous animal known as an AMGEBA is one of 
these. Related forms of this jelly animalcule secrete shells of varying form and structure. 
Some of these, known as FORAMS, are of carbonate of lime, and wonderfully like nautiluses and 
other of the higher molluscan shells in aspect. Though so minute, scarcely visible to the 
unassisted eye, they occur in the sea in such numbers as to form by their aggregations 
the more considerable ingredients of vast areas of the earth’s strata, both past and present. 
The chalk cliffs of Albion and the white tenacious ooze of the broad Atlantic are thus to a 
large extent composed of the shells of minute organisms, which formerly flourished near the 
surface of the ocean, but sank on their death to its abysmal depths. 
The simplest of the forams fabricate shells with a single chamber, which are often 
elegantly vase- or flask-shaped. More usually, however, the shell represents the product of 
repeated buddings or outgrowths, and may attain considerable dimensions. Flattened circular 
forms of this type much resemble time-worn coins, and are hence called NUMMULITES. Their 
fossil-shells enter mainly into the composition of rocks which extend through North Africa 
and Asia to the Himalaya, and supplied the stone of which the Pyramids are built. 
Allied to the Forams, but distinguished by the radiating, needle-like contour of their 
false feet and the flinty texture of their shells, are an equally numerous assemblage of 
organisms known as RADIOLARIANS. Like the Forams, they are inhabitants of the sea, and 
their discarded shells enter extensively into the constitution of strata. A little globular fresh- 
water form, devoid of a shell, and with slender bristle-like feet radiating in every direction, 
is known as the SUN-ANIMALCULE, and forms a connecting-link between the last two groups. 
From Man to Egg-laying Mammals, Molluscs to Animalcules, the vast scheme of the 
Animal Creation has now been successively portrayed. With such simple gelatinous life-specks 
as the Amceba and its allies THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD make their exit: unorganised 
organisms, groping blindly in the darkness —‘‘ Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” 
