STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 49 



Nor is this all. Those bright green specks which 

 stud the surface, if examined with high powers, will 

 turn out to be, not specks, but animals,* and, as Eh- 

 renberg believes (though the belief is but little 

 shared), highly organized animals, possessing a 

 mouth, many stomachs, and an eye. It is right to 

 add that not only are microscopists at variance with 

 Ehrenberg on the supposed organization of these 

 specks, but the majority deny that the Volvox itself 

 is an animal. Von Siebold in Germany, and Pro- 

 fessor George Busk and Professor Williamson in 

 England, have argued with so much force against 

 the animal nature of the Volvox, which they call a 

 plant, that in most modern works you will find this 

 opinion adopted. But the latest of the eminent au- 

 thorities on the subject of Infusoria, in his magnifi- 

 cent work just published, returns to the old idea 

 that the Volvox is an animal after all, although of 

 very simple organization.f 



The dispute may perhaps excite your surprise. 

 You are perplexed at the idea of a plant (if plant it 

 be) moving about, swimming with all the vigor and 

 dexterity of an animal, and swimming by means of 

 animal organs, the cilia. But this difficulty is one 

 of our own creation. We first employ the word 



* To avoid the equivoque of calling the parts of an animal, 

 which are capable of independent existence, by the same term as 

 the whole mass, we may adopt HUXLEY'S suggestion, and call all 

 such individual parts zboids instead of animals. Decks suggested 

 zoonites in the same sense. Sur la Conformite Organique, p. 13. 



t STEIN : Der Organismus der Infusionsthiere, 1859, p. 36-38. 



c 



