Foraminifera

This elegant Foraminifera has long been one of the best known of recent species; in its young state it is one of the most abundant organisms in the Cuban sand: in this immature form it appears a Foraminifera of the ordinary spiral type; […]

By the slow accumulation of dead shells, corals, &c., cemented by the smaller tests of foraminifera, the Coralline Crag eventually attained a thickness of fifty feet.

The best method of examining chalk for minute Foraminifera is this: […] The balsam gradually penetrates into the cells, the black rings of the air-bubbles disappear, and the minute, frequently very elegant cells of the Foraminifera become visible.

Several forms were met with [at 2,800 fathoms] which apparently do not occur on the surface, particularly a number of species of a group which is so far as we know entirely undescribed. It seems to be intermediate between the Radiolarians and the Foraminiferas, resembling the former in the condition and appearance of the sarcode and in the siliceous composition of the test, and the latter in external form.

Careful preparation of a fragment of chalk usually brings to light remains, sometimes well preserved, of foraminifera (Rotalina ornata, Cristellaria rotulata, Globigerina bulloides).

Yet more wonderful and beautiful than the Amœbas are the Rhizopoda called Foraminiferas. The hard word Foraminifera means to carry an aperture or opening, and is used as the name of an immense number of tiny creatures living in thin shells with openings in them, though which the inhabitants send out the threads all Rhizopoda have the power of making from the substance of their bodies.

Backboneless animals precede those with backbones and the minute foraminifera—bits of jelly in shells—species with a more complex organisation.

He then passed to the beds next in succession in the series, and exhibited some beautiful photographic prints of their Oolitic structure, as seen under the microscope, shewing tubules growing round a nucleus, generally a fragment of a calcareous organism—in some cases an entire one, as a Foraminifera—but whether the tubules were of animal or vegetable origin, he was not prepared to say.