274 SEA- SIDE STUDIES. 



it possible that there can inhere in albumen a mysterious 

 histomorphotic power in virtue of which it transmutes 

 itself from the liquid into the solid condition ? This 

 were only a mode of enouncing the theory of sponta- 

 neous generation."* All these questions are super- 

 fluous, since the fact is imaginary ; an albuminous 

 corpusculated fluid does not circulate in the cavity of 

 the Actiniae ; sea water, carrying whatever accident 

 may have brought to it, is the " nutritive fluid'' of 

 these animals. 



Dr Williams has, however, published drawings of the 

 corpuscles discoverable in the fluid, and Schmarda, as I 

 learn from Victor Carus,-|- declares that such corpuscles 

 are constant. Can these statements be reconciled with 

 what results from the experiments of ^Ir Couch and 

 myself? They have the advantage of being positives 

 against negatives, and must, one would think, have 

 some truth in them. What is that truth ? This ques- 

 tion, I confess, haunted me till an answer suggested 

 itself One of my Daisies (A. Bellis) brought forth a 

 round mass of fifteen young, agglomerated together in 

 a ball : they were in diflerent stages of develo23ment, 

 and being perfectly transparent, admitted of easy micro- 

 scopic examination. In them spherical globules were 

 distinctly visible, circulating by the action of the cilia 

 lining the cavity; and with the globules an occasional 

 animalcide. This w^as the case with all of them ; and 



* Loc. cit. p.. 483. 



'I' Jahre&h&i-ickt uber die im Gebiete der Zootomie erschienenen A rbeiten, 

 1856, p. 25. 



