80 
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 
senting two lobes, from which pseudopodial projections were pushed 
out, presently assumed a more orbicular outline, and the pseudopodia 
disappeared. These were examples which possessed rather long, hair- 
like external processes. At first they were not seemingly affected 
by the action of the acid, neither was the mantle or coat, and I had 
begun for a moment to query were these hair-like processes of a rigid 
and siliceous nature, but the results soon gave a negative reply. Ey 
degrees there took place a slight widening of the hair-like processes, 
from being of a fine linear appearance, as in the normal condition, 
so that I could attribute to them a certain amount of width and, as I 
might say, two sides ; these seemingly somewhat wider below or 
during their length than at the acute apices, that is slightly tapering. 
They could not, then, be siliceous. Presently a few of these processes 
seemed to drop ojf, and showed a slightly capitate lower extremity, and 
several showed a more or less curved figure. I tried, in Pig. 6, to 
convey an idea of the appearance such detached processes now 
presented to me. But, perhaps, the most interesting result followed 
the application of a stronger dose of sulphuric acid, when at once the 
outer coat, hair-like processes and all, became quickly dissolved, leav- 
ing the sarcode body a naked somewhat sharply-bounded globular 
mass, the contained granules broken up, the pale elliptic bodies 
dissolved or disappeared. The result of this experiment was, therefore, 
not less satisfactory than the preceding in demonstrating, though in a 
reverse kind of way, the complete difference and independent charac- 
ter of the outer coat and the inner sarcode body-mass. 
I have to add, that any re-agent applied to an individual showing 
the faint and pellucid outer investment, already described and attempted 
to be pourtrayed in Pig. 3, causes its immediate disappearance, even 
though its action be too weak to call forth any of the previously 
mentioned results. 
All these experiments, then, seem to me to corroborate and shed a 
light upon the interpretation previously advanced of our examination 
of the structure of the living rhizopod. Perhaps, indeed, some may 
think the word structure" misapplied to a being so lowly, and, after 
all, so little differentiated ; but, at least, like other Rhizopoda, it can- 
not be denied its special characteristics, even by those to whom one 
sar code-patch is the same as another sarcode-patch, each of which is 
only moulded into this or that hy accident. Here is a form," at all 
events, which may or may not be independent, but such a form in its 
specific" details, so far as I am aware, as has not yet met observation. 
Until, then, it proves to be but a transitory form, it possesses quite as 
distinguishable features as very many others constantly recurring ; it 
has presented itself in three distinct localities — one some hundred miles 
or more distant from the two others — and, on the whole, deserves a 
record as well as more familiar types. 
But having now gained as much acquaintance with the character- 
istics of this rhizopod as present research has disclosed, we may just 
for a moment speculate as to the analogies, so to say, of its composition. 
