ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY, MICIJOSCOPY, ETC. 389 



a few sponges attached to a wire fixed in the mouth of a centrifuge tube. 

 Some were still active after nineteen hours. The overgrowth of the 

 larger granular cells was observed, and the fixation. Material not centri- 

 fuged showed that the Amphiblastula? may be active for about twenty- 

 four hours, and that fixation is complete two days after. The freshly- 

 hatched larva3 swim at the surface except when disturbed, when they 

 seek the lower layers for a time, but as proliferation of the granular 

 cells increases the larvae sink to the bottom, while still retaining their 

 motile character for a short time. J. A. T. 



Sponges from Inle Lake. — Nelson Annandale {Records Indian 

 Museum, 1918, 14, 75-1), 1 pi.). Only three species of sponges were 

 found in this Shan Plateau lake, and these were varieties of cosmopolitan 

 forms,— SponfftUa lacustris, var. proJiferens, &'. fragills, var. calcuttana, 

 and Ephydatia fluviatiUs, var. intha var. nov. The most noteworthy 

 features of the new variety are the extreme softness of the body, which 

 often collapses in drying into a mere slimy layer, and the regularity of 

 the arrangement of the radiating fibres of the skeleton. The canals of 

 the sponge shelter quite a little fauna of Annelids (e.g. three species 

 of Chsetoii aster) and larval insects (including at least two species of 

 Chirouomidge, a Sisyra (Xeuropteron), and a caddis-worm without a 

 protecting case. J. A. T. 



Protozoa. 



New Amoebae. — Asa A. Schaeffer {Trans. Anier. Micr. Soc, 1918, 

 37, 79-1)6, -2 pis., 9 figs.). A description is given of Anmba bigemma 

 sp. n., with tapering pseudopodia, with numerous small twin-crystals 

 attached to "excretion spheres" in the endoplasm, with a single nucleus 

 and chromatin granules aggregated in a spherical mass, with numerous 

 small contractile vacuoles, with rapid movements — about 125 microns 

 per minute. A second new form is Pelomyxa lenUssima sp. n., very 

 small and very sluggish, with a very much compressed body, with few 

 pseudopodia except in the quiescent state, with a spherical nucleus and 

 often two, with numerous contractile vacuoles, with numerous bacterial 

 rods and few refractive bodies (starch grains). A third form, F. schiedti 

 sp. n., the smallest species known, with rare pseudopodia, with fluid 

 protoplasm, with movement .by eruptive waves of endoplasm partly 

 reflected back along the sides, with nucleus usually double, with numerous 

 small contractile vacuoles, with very numerous starch grains and 

 numerous bacterial rods. J. A. T. 



Respiration in Paramecium. — E. .J. Lund {Amer. Journ. Physiol., 

 1918, 47, 107-77). When Paramecium is removed from its native 

 hay infusion in a well-nourished condition, to a condition of starvation 

 in tap-water, the rate of oxidations in the cell decreases simultaneously 

 with the disappearance of .the greater amount of the deutoplasmic food 

 reserves of the protoplasm. Feeding boiled yeast to a Paramecium 

 which has been brought into a state of acute starvation by placing it in 

 tap-water may increase the speed of the oxidations two or three times 

 the original amount in the acutely starved but otherwise normal active 



