REPORT ON THE FORAMINIFERA. 
XV 
That the chambers of the pelagic Foraminifera are more or less filled with sarcode 
when they reach the bottom is, I believe, generally admitted, indeed it seems impossible 
to gainsay the direct evidence of the fact obtained by a succession of competent observers. 
The question that remains therefore is simply whether the animal continues in a vitally 
active condition, or is only so much dead protoplasm awaiting decomposition. If it be 
the latter its preservation from rapid decay requires explanation, which may possibly 
be found, as suggested by Sir Wyville Thomson, in the low temperature of the sea- 
bottom. 
It may be that no uniform rule applies in all cases. Of Hastigerinci for example, 
though in some localities as plentiful at the surface as Globigerina, a bottom-specimen 
even approximately complete is rarely met with, and one that could be mistaken for the 
living organism never ; whilst of Candeina, with a test equally thin and fragile, the 
bottom-specimens are for the most part not only perfect but larger and more fully 
developed than any hitherto collected at the surface. The fragmentary condition of the 
bottom-specimens of Hastigerinci may, it is true, be owing to the spinous exterior of the 
shell, which renders it additionally liable to fracture ; and the completeness of those of 
Candeina, on the other hand, to the extreme smoothness of the surface ; but it appears 
to me to require more collateral evidence than we are yet in possession of to make such a 
theory quite feasible. Again, when we find specimens of allied forms like Pulvinuma 
elegans and Pidvinulina menarclii side by side in the same bottom-ooze, the shells and 
shell-contents, so far as can be told, in exactly similar condition and with every appearance 
of life about them, it is hard to believe that those of the one species were all living when 
taken, and those of the other all dead. 
In the case of the pelagic Foraminifera, the material placed in my hands for examina- 
tion was only a small fraction of that actually collected by the naturalists of the 
Expedition ; and some of the difficulties which have been dwelt upon did not present 
themselves in the same way to those who were in the habit of examining the freshly 
obtained organisms on shipboard- Mr. Murray, for example, attributes a wider distribu- 
tion, a greater abundance and frequency of occurrence, and a greater variety in size and 
thickness of shell, to several pelagic species than I have been able to state from my own 
observations. The Challenger naturalists had also the opportunity which I have not had 
of comparing the various layers of bottom-mud obtained by means of the Baillie sounding- 
tube, and in many other ways had advantages which I have not enjoyed. For these 
reasons, therefore, I desire to avoid the expression of any very positive opinion on the 
subject. Questions relating to the geographical and bathymetrical distribution of the 
shells of pelagic Foraminifera are referred to in Prof. Dittmar s Report on the Composition 
of Ocean Water (Pliys. Chem. Chalk Exped., pt. i. p. 221), and their further treatment 
may well be left for the forthcoming Narrative volumes and for Messrs, Murray and 
Renard’s Report on Deep-Sea Deposits. 
