The Acanthometræ (see [fig. 88], Acanthometra bulbosa) are all marine animals; their skeleton consists of a number of long spicules which radiate from a common centre, tapering to their extremities. These spicules are traversed by a canal with a furrow at the base through which groups of pseudopodia enter, emerging at the apex. Besides, there are a vast number of pseudopodia not thus enclosed, resembling those of the Actinophrys in appearance and action. The body is spherical, and occupies the spaces left between the bases of the spicules. The exterior film covering the body seems to be more decidedly membranaceous than that of the Actinophrys, but it is pierced by the pseudopodia which radiate through it. This exterior film itself is enclosed in a layer of a less tenacious substance, resembling that of which the pseudopodia are formed. There is a species of Acanthometra (echinoides) extremely common in some parts of the coast of Norway, which, to the naked eye, resembles merely a crimson point.
Fig. 90, p. 20.
DICTYOPODIUM TRILOBUM.
Fig. 91. Podocyrtis Schomburgi.
The Polycystina are an exceedingly numerous and widely dispersed group of siliceous rhizopods. They are inhabitants of the deep waters, having been brought up from vast depths in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Their bodies are inclosed in siliceous shells, which have either the form of a thin hollow sphere perforated by large openings like windows, or of a perforated sphere produced here and there into tubes, spines, and a variety of singular projections: so they have many varied but beautiful microscopic forms. The animal which inhabits these shells is a mouthless mass of sarcode, divided into four lobes with a nucleus in each and covered with a thick gelatinous coat. It is crimson in the Eucyrtidium and Dictyopodium trilobum of Haeckel (figs. 89 and [90]): in others, as the Podocyrtis Schomburgi, it is olive brown with yellow globules ([fig. 91]). These creatures extend themselves in radiating filaments through the perforations of their shells in search of food, like their type the Actinophrys sol, to whose pseudopodia the filaments are perfectly similar in form, isolation, and in the slow movements of granules along their borders. The Polycystine does not always fill its shell, occasionally retreating into the vault or upper part of it, as in the Eucyrtidium (fig. 89, frontispiece to vol. i.). Sometimes the shell is furnished with radiating elongations, as in the Dictyopodium trilobum ([fig. 90]). In both of these shells the animal consists of four crimson lobes. These beautiful microscopic organisms are found at present in the Mediterranean, in the Arctic and Antarctic seas, and on the bed of the North Atlantic. They had been exceedingly abundant during the later geological periods; multitudes are discovered in the chalk and marls in Sicily, Greece, at Bermuda, at Richmond in Virginia and elsewhere; in all 282 different fossil forms have been described, grouped in 44 genera.
Fig. 92, p. 21.
AULOCANTHA SCOLYMANTHA.