ZOOLOGY. 403 



fifty; the greatest number of strings were composed of only three or four, 

 often six to eight, and rarely as high as fifty. Very rarely the fibres split 

 longitudinally, and in such instances the fibrillae were most frequently long, 

 and moved about with undulations rather than a wriggling motion. A sin- 

 gle ultimate cellule, when set loose, danced about in a zigzag manner; but 

 whenever two were combined, the motion had a definite direction, which 

 corresponded to the longer diameter of the duplicate combination ; and if 

 only three were combined, the spiral motion was the result of their united 

 action. "What it is that causes these cellules to move, I do not profess to 

 know; but certainly it is not because they possess life as independent beings. 

 This much is settled, however, that we may have presented to us all the phe- 

 nomena of life, as exhibited by the activity of the lowest forms of animals 

 and plants, by the ultimate cellules of the decomposed and fetid striated 

 muscle of a Sagitta. I do not pretend to say that everything that comes 

 under the name of Vibrio and Spirillum it a decomposed muscle or other tis- 

 sue, although I believe such will turn out to be the fact; but this much I 

 will vouch for, and will call on Prof. Agassiz to witness, that what would be 

 declared, by competent authority, to be a living being, and accounted a cer- 

 tain species of vibrio, is nothing but absolutely dead muscle. 



OX THE LOWEST (RHIZOPOD) TYPE OF AXIMAL LIFE, CONSIDERED 

 IJST ITS EELATIOXS TO PHYSIOLOGY, GEOLOGY, AND ZOOLOGY. 



The following is an abstract of a lecture on the above subject, recently 

 given before the Royal Institution, London, by Prof. Carpenter: 



Among the unexpected revelations which the modern improved micro- 

 scope has made to the scientific investigator, there is, perhaps, none more, 

 fertile in interest than that which relates to the very lowest type of animal 

 existence; from the study of which both the physiologist and the zoologist 

 may draAv the most instructive lessons, whilst the geologist finds in it the 

 key to the existence of various stratified deposits of no mean importance, 

 both in extent and thickness. Though the doctrines of Professor Ehrenberg 

 as to the complexity of organization possessed by the minutest forms of ani- 

 malcules, have now been rejected by the concurrent voice of the most com- 

 petent observers, working with the best instruments, yet the wonders of ani- 

 malcular life are not in the least diminished by this repudiation of them. 

 Indeed, as great and small are merely relative terms, it may be questioned 

 whether the marvel of a complex structure comprised within the narrowest 

 space Ave can conceive, is really so great as that of finding those operations 

 of life we are accustomed to see carried on by an elaborate apparatus, per- 

 formed without any instruments whatever ; a little particle of apparently 

 homogeneous jelly changing itself into a greater variety of forms than the 

 fabled Proteus, laying hold of its food without members, swalloM'ing it with- 

 out a mouth, digesting it without a stomach, appropriating its nutritious 

 material without absorbent vessels or a circulating system, moving from 

 place to place without muscles, feeling (if it has any power to do so) without 

 nerves, multiplying itself without eggs ; and not only this, but in many 

 instances forming shelly coverings of a symmetry and completeness not sur- 

 passed by those of any testaceous animals. As examples of this type of 

 existence, the Amceba and ActinopTirys were first described; and it was then 

 pointed out that the only recognizable characters by which such beings 'are 

 distinguishable as animals from vegetable organisms of equal simplicity, 



