130 Mr. H.J. Carter on the Orffanisation of Infusoria. 



the body, and peripheral, while the vesieula is in the anterior 

 extremityi 'in Kiioit'Hurt hIi liult muW •fMHJini /hr/iiun^i Uf^Kyiq 



The apparent qilTescfcnt tetate bf th^e Vcsicula in :^s^n.9zV, Eu- 

 glena, &c. may be an approach to its disappearance altogether 

 as a distinct organ, and therefore a step nearer to the vegetable 

 kingdom. But Schneider, in allusion to this, quotes a passage 

 from Colin, in which the latter observes, that " internal pulsating 

 spaces" have been discovered in "certain genera of Alga};" on 

 which Schneider justly remarks, that if they "occur in the 

 swarm-cells of Conferva, they certainly cease to be a character- 

 istic of animal nature* -" — thus rendering useless another di- 

 stinguishing point between animals and plants at this part of the 

 organic kingdom, which after all, perhaps, may be found to have 

 its homologue in the vacuoles of the vegetable protoplasm. -H 



That the vesieula is a distinct organ, and not merely a spabe 

 like the digestive globule, might be inferred from its alway^ 

 occurring in the same place in the same species ; but in additidn 

 to this, the fact was on one occasion most satisfactorily demon- 

 strated to me by its remaining pendent in a globular form to the 

 buccal cavity of a Vorticella, when, by the decomposition of the 

 sarcode, and evolution of a swarm of rapidly moving monadic 

 particles, these two organs, with the cylindrical nucleus or gland> 

 though still slightly adhering to each other, were so dissectdd 

 out as to be nearly separate ; and thus yielding in position from 

 time to time, as they were struck by the little particles, their 

 forms and relative positions respectively became particularly 

 evident (fig. 76 a). 



Although globular in shape, yet, as before stated, it is ac- 

 companied in Paramecium aurelia by a variable number of pyri- 

 form sinuses, which are arranged around it in a stellate fornit 

 In most of the other animalcules these are globular, and, under 

 exhaustion of the animalcule from various causes, are frequently 

 so distended, and thus so approximated, as to assume the ap- 

 pearance of an areolar structure, immediately in contact with 

 the vesieula (fig. 84). Each globular sinus, however, would ap- 

 pear to be the proximal or largest of a concatenation of smaller 

 ones, which diminish in size with their distance from the vesieula 

 (fig. 82 d). The vesieula becomes doubled preparatory to fissi- 

 paration, and therefore appears dual in Vorticella^ and quadruple 

 in Paramecium^ &c. (fig. 69) ; and it is interesting to find that 

 in the metamorphosis of the former into Acineta it frequently 

 acquires a plurality similar to that which obtains in the llhizo- 

 poda generally f. n' yuwimrv^] •< 



•■> HiB')qqfi Hfl ,;ftcrm f» 



* hoc. cit. p. 330. 



t See particularly Stein's work on the DeVdbpitient of Infusoria. 



