MICROT/ENIELLA CLYMENELL/E. 49 



sporonts. If the entire chain is regarded as the individual we 

 are met by the same difficulty which confronts us in connection 

 with the colonial flagellates. 



The possibility of this being a plant form has not been over- 

 looked. The absence of definite walls together with the method 

 of cell division and terminal cell changes are opposed to what is 

 known of types in the group of fungi. To make sure, however, I 

 showed the specimens to my colleague Professor R. A. Harper 

 who gives me permission to quote him to the effect that he finds 

 nothing in the structure or the history of this organism that would 

 justify him in placing it with plant forms. 



Amongst protozoa, nothing, so far as I am aware, has been 

 described of like nature. Leger's Tceniocystis is a gregarine with 

 numerous septa and with external annulations which give it the 

 appearance of a T&nia, but it is a single cell and has a single 

 nucleus. The absence of motile organs in the present form, and 

 its mode of reproduction, leave no grounds for placing it otherwise 

 than with the sporozoa, and here the only possible place for it is 

 with the gregarines. There is some evidence that the often 

 sharply pointed end of the primite is the attaching portion, but 

 no stage showing such attachment has been found in the smears. 



I would classify Microtaniella as a colonial parasite belonging 

 to the order Gregarinida, suborder Schizogregarina, of which it 

 should form a new subdivision. 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 

 March, 1915. 



