_Variability of the Lower Animals_.
Among the lowest and most ancient marine organisms are the Foraminifera,
little masses of living jelly, apparently structureless, but which
secrete beautiful shelly coverings, often perfectly symmetrical, as
varied in form as those of the mollusca and far more complicated. These
have been studied with great care by many eminent naturalists, and the
late Dr. W.B. Carpenter in his great work--the _Introduction to the
Study of the Foraminifera_--thus refers to their variability: "There is
not a single species of plant or animal of which the range of variation
has been studied by the collocation and comparison of so large a number
of specimens as have passed under the review of Messrs. Williamson,
Parker, Rupert Jones, and myself in our studies of the types of this
group;" and he states as the result of this extensive comparison of
specimens: "The range of variation is so great among the Foraminifera
as to include not merely those differential characters which have been
usually accounted _specific_, but also those upon which the greater part
of the _genera_, of this group have been founded, and even in some
instances those of its _orders_.
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