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IN

OPHIOCYTIUM.

N the Micrographic Dictionary it is said that no species of Ophiocytium have yet been observed in Britain. The plant, therefore, of which I send a drawing, and which seems to be undoubtedly a species of Ophiocytium, is interesting as an addition. to our Microscopic Flora. It seems only to differ in size from O. majus, figured in plate 45 of the Micrographic Dictionary. I have found it abundantly in a small pond, entangled amongst the filaments, &c., of other Alga; and I think that it is only from its minuteness that it has hitherto escaped

A CENTURY AGO.

MOST of your readers will not need to be

informed that Natural History a century ago was a very different science to what it is at the present day. In order to bring this the more vividly before them, perhaps you will allow me space to make a few extracts from an old work which I have met with. It is, I believe, a fair sample of the text-books which our grandfathers and grandmothers used in their youth.

It is entitled, "A description of Three hundred Animals, viz., Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Serpents and Insects. With a particular Account of the Manner of their catching of Whales in Greenland. Extracted from the best Authors, and Adapted to the Use of all Capacities. Illustrated with Copper-plates, whereon is curiously engraven every Beast, Bird, Fish, Serpent, and Insect, described in the whole book. The Ninth Edition, carefully corrected and amended. Printed for C. & R. Ware at the Bible and Sun, on Ludgate-hill, 1763." If, having in some measure recovered breath, after reading this lengthy title, we proceed to the preface,

we shall find, that "the Instruction of Children having been always thought, by wise Men, of great Use, both with regard to the present Age, and to Posterity; and most of the Books, which have been made use of to introduce Children into an Habit of Reading, being such as tend rather to cloy than entertain them." The anonymous author has extracted from "the most considerable Authors," a short account of all the Beasts, Birds, Insects, and Fishes. He somewhat magniloquently closes the preface by saying, "If this brief Essay shall any Ways contribute to the End proposed, let God have the Glory, and the Compiler the Good Wishes and Prayers of Parents.” It will be observed that throughout my extracts I carefully followed the somewhat primitive punctuation and typography of the original. Every substantive is commenced with a capital letter, as in modern German.

There are three of the Animals described which have apparently become extinct in later years; unless, indeed, some of your readers, who are so widely scattered over the world, can personally testify to having encountered them. First, on page 19, we read that "the Manticora (or, according to the Persians, Mantiora), a Devourer, is bred among the Indians; having a triple Row of Teeth beneath and above, and in Bigness and Roughness like a Lion's; as are also his Feet; Face and Ears like a Man's; his Tail like a Scorpion's, armed with a Sting, and sharp-pointed Quills. His Voice is like a small Trumpet or Pipe. He is so wild 'tis very difficult to tame him; and as swift as an Hart. With his Tail he wounds the Hunters, whether they come before or behind him. When the Indians take a Whelp of this Beast, they bruise its Buttocks and Tail, to prevent its bearing the sharp Quills; then it is tamed without Danger."

On the next page a still more marvellous creature is described, i. e., "The Lamia, concerning which there are many fictitious Stories, is (according to the Opinion of some Writers) the Creature mentioned in the 34th Chapter of Isaiah, called in Hebrew, Liliath; as also the same which is mentioned in the 4th of Lamentations. It is thought to be the swiftest of all four-footed Creatures, so that its Prey can seldom or never escape it; And by its Fraud it destroys Men, (or, when it sees a Man, it lays open its Breast, and entices him to draw near; and when it has him within Reach, it falls upon and devours him. It is said to be bred in Libya; and to have a Face and Breasts like a very beautiful Woman. It has no Voice but that of hissing like a Serpent. Its hinder Parts are like a Goat's, its fore Legs like a Bear's; its Body is scaled all over. It is said, they sometimes devour their own young."

It is almost superfluous to add that there appears, in his turn, The Unicorn, a Beast which, tho' doubted of by many Writers, yet it is by others thus

described: He has but one Horn, and that an exceeding rich one, growing out of the Middle of his Forehead. His head resembles an Hart's, his Feet an Elephant's, his Tail a Boar's, and the rest of his Body an Horse's. The Horn is about a Foot and a half in Length. His Voice is like the Lowing of an Ox. His Mane and Hair are of a yellowish Colour. His Horn is as hard as Iron, and as rough as any File, twisted or curled like a flaming Sword; very straight, sharp and everywhere black, excepting the Point. Great Virtues are attributed to it, in expelling of Poison, and curing of several Diseases. He is not a Beast of Prey."

A picture of the Whale-Fishery, on p. 132, is very curious, the seamen being dressed in long coats resembling a soldier's tunic, and in triangular cocked-hats rather a different style of dress from that indulged in by modern sailors. On arriving at the Serpents, after a very terrible description of divers Dragons, of which the author very wisely says, "it may be justly questioned whether they exist," we find the Cockatrice described as "Called the King of Serpents, not from his Bigness, for he is much inferior, in this Respect, to a great many Serpents; but because of his majestic Pace, for he does not creep upon the Ground, like other Serpents, but goes half-upright; for which Cause all other Serpents avoid him; and it seems, Nature designed him that Pre-eminence, by the Crown or Coronet upon his Head. Writers differ concerning the Production of this Animal. Some are of Opinion that it is brought forth of a Cock's Egg, and fed upon by a Snake, or Toad, and so becomes a Cockatrice, &c."

The last extract I have space for is a story on p. 200, concerning a combat between a spider and toad, which runs as follows:-"A certain Earl travelling near Woburn in Bedfordshire, some of his Company espied a Toad fighting with a Spider, under a Hedge by the High-way Side, whereat they stood still, till the Earl came also to behold the same; and there he saw how the Spider still kept her Standing, and the Toad divers times went back from the Spider, and did eat a Piece of an Herb like a Plantain; at last, the Earl having seen the Toad do it often, and still return to the Combat against the Spider, ordered one of his Men to go and cut off that Herb; which he performed, and brought it away. Presently after the Toad returned to seek it, and, not finding it, according to her Expectation, swelled and burst asunder; for, having received Poison from the Spider in the Combat, Nature taught her the Value of that Herb, to expel and drive it out; but wanting the Herb, the Poison did instantly work, and destroy her." Here is valuable evidence for the correspondents who wrote lately in SCIENCE - GOSSIP about the "Spider's Poison Vessels " ! Of course, in the preceding extracts, I have merely quoted the descriptions

which would appear most extraordinary and amusing to our modern ideas; there is, it is only fair to add, a considerable amount of really useful information in the volume. But, without actually reading extracts from works of this nature, I believe few would credit the fact that such preposterous statements were prevalent even "a century ago."

IT

FORAMINIFERA.

F. ALLEN.

T is not a little remarkable that whilst the shells of foraminifers are amongst the common objects most familiar to microscopists, and thousands of miles of the soft beds of our deepest oceans, and whole mountains and great tracks of land-the solidified mud of the oceans of geologic ages—are almost entirely composed of the carapaces and débris of these tiny beings in uncountable myriads, that hardly any one knows anything about them in their living state, and very few naturalists even can be said to be at all reliably acquainted with the proper history of the various species, still less with their actual habits.

What is a foraminifer? may indeed be easily answered. It is one of the very lowest forms of life. It belongs to the class of Rhizopods, merely gelatinous animals of which the Amoeba is the simplest form. This curious spec of living jelly is devoid of any visible organization, has no perceptible muscles or nerves, no head, no mouth, neither arms nor legs a mere minute mass of sarcode. And yet life is there-life in one of the most mysterious of its many forms and manifestations. That thin flesh, seemingly all on the run like limpid starch, quivers to the sensation of touch, contracts with the pain of injury, protrudes long filaments as arms to seek for food, perhaps more tender than even its own transparent substance, or uses these thread-like limbs pseudopods, as the Greek-and-Latin-loving savans have termed them-as cables to pull itself along. Whether these Amoebae even have the thinnest of skins is more than any one could swear to, though of course they ought to have; but if any kind of these animals possesses no other difference than that of the power of consolidating calcareous, siliceous, or horny matter around it, and turning its skin into a shelly house, it becomes at once a polycystin or a foraminifer. In the main, if it has a siliceous shell, it is the former; if a calcareous shell, perforated with a lot of little holes for the protrusion of the pseudopods, the latter. There are, however, imperforate foraminifers and perforate polycystins, and these of course have mimetic resemblances to each other. Naturally, however, the imperforate foraminifers have more affinity with the polycystins than the perforate polycystins have with the foraminifera. We cannot here, however, enter

into details of affinities or classification, for the main object of this article is to suggest work required to be done, rather than to teach what has been accomplished.

Two subjects require at the hands of naturalists and students full consideration and attention: a general review of the accepted classification into families, genera, and species; and a careful and actual investigation of the living forms and their actual stages of development. The one question involves the other; and we must start with an hypothesis. We must presume that the primitive typical form of a foraminifer is a simple single sphere, and that this primitive form is the first rudimentary stage of every species, however complex may be its ultimate mature condition.

Shut up in its stony cell, then, how will it propagate its kind? The mass of sarcode, constantly fed, increases, exudes; and the exuded mass ultimately forms another individual, which coats itself, and builds another house next door to its parent's, and the two have become a pair of semi-detached Amœban villas. Nutrition of the sarcode still goes on, and exudation again takes place; another house is added, and yet another and another, until in the order of generation a street of Amaban residences is built. All this is very simple, and one would hardly have preconceived the possibility of much variety in the results of a process so extremely rudimentary. And yet species and varieties more numerous than those of any other single order of animals abound, and the class of foraminifers is prolific in variety and beauty of forms. But all this variety and beauty are due entirely to the way in which each particular species builds its house, and the plan upon which it forms its street.

Let us explain ourselves by a selection of actual examples. Some foraminifers are perfectly round and solitary, as the membranous Gromia, and the calcareous shelled Orbulina. Other kinds will put

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There is yet another division of developments as important as those we have been considering, and capable of permitting again all those modifications of lobation and ornamentation we have previously witnessed under novel and different circumstances. This division is that constituted by the compound forms-that is, those in which the development of the lobes takes place upon a plurality of lines. The lobes may be added upon two, three, or more axes, and these axes may be straight, bent, or spiral; and in each of these cases the lobation and ornamentation may repeat the wonderful variety characteristic of the simple classes. In Biloculina (fig. 132) we have one lobe

Fig. 132. Fig. 133. Fig. 134. Bilocutina simplex. Triloculina Austriaca. T. nitida.

merely adherent to the side of another; in Triloculina, a third lobe is patched on to the side (figs. 133, 134). In Spiroloculina (fig. 135) we have many lobes alternately added; and in Quinqueloculina, and others, we have other still more complex arrangements.

Amongst the most abundant genera and species

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bulina retinaculata. Of this nature possibly is the recently discovered very remarkable fossil from the lowest of all known fossiliferous rocks-the Eozoon Canadense.

Amongst the simple single-axis forms, even crops up, as an example of erratic growth, Truntulina variabilis (fig. 139).

Such, then, is in the main the groundwork of the classification of the foraminifera-a classification based on the plans of arrangement of the lobes or segmentation of the shell. The animal inhabitants are treated as all alike, mere masses of jelly-like flesh. It is evident that a classification founded entirely on the disposition of the parts of the shell cannot be a perfect one, and that considerable modifications must at the least be engrafted on it as the knowledge of the living structure of the animals and of their modes of generation is acquired. Now it is just this knowledge which is needed, and it is the acquirement of this information that is an open and fame-giving field for microscopists. Almost all that has been done in the way of modifying the primary basis of a purely shell classification has been done by inductive reasoning upon general considerations or microscopic examinations of shellstructure. What is wanted is a regular systematic

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