VAMPYRELLA LATEKITIA. 101 



. phrys-like Amoeba. In other instances it forms a dense 

 spore, the product of which is not known. 



Encistment usually takes place after the taking of 

 food. Penard (/. c.) observed this in examples which 

 he studied. After it has emptied [several Spirogyra 

 cells, V. lateritia, he says, loses its brick-red colour, 

 which is at the utmost visible here and there in spots 

 in the greenish mass with which the body is stuffed. 

 " Later on it will divide within its cist into several 

 embryos, which will pierce a hole, and issue, one after 

 the other, already clothed in their fine red colour." 



We have not ourselves witnessed the phenomenon 

 exactly as described, but in an example from Dunham 

 the occurrence was noted of the emission of an amoe- 

 boid spore. This took place when the animal was still 

 attached to a conferva filament, after gorging itself 

 with the cell-contents. The " spore " presented itself 

 as a particle of greyish protoplasm, finely granular, 

 and furnished with a contractile vacuole, and a small 

 sphericle corpuscle which may have represented a 

 nucleus. Its movements were comparatively rapid. 

 The pseudopodia Avere at first acuminate, straight, and 

 sharply pointed (PI. X, fig. 5), but ultimately, after 

 complete severance from the parent body, they became 

 digitate and blunt. The ultimate development of this 

 young Vampyrellct was not traced, but it retained the 

 amoeboid form during the short time that it was under 

 observation (PI. X, figs. 6, 7). 



V. lateritia is sometimes found presenting characters 

 varying from those described, and which make it diffi- 

 cult of identification. Biitschli, in Bronn's ' Thier- 

 Reichs,' represents its form as elongated and slug-like 

 (PL XI, fig. 3), without the capitate rays, and destitute 

 also of elongated pseudopodal filaments, but furnished, 

 in place of these, with a profusion of short, radiating, 

 tapering, and sometimes branching filaments, which 

 clothe the entire body-surface. An Essex example 

 (PI. XI, fig. 1) represents the animal in this condition, 

 but with a spherical body which is clearly the normal 



