l62 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



professed also to have observed the transformation 

 of the chlorophyl of flowering plants into Confervae 

 and Infusoria. 



The celebrated Kutzing did not proceed so far as 

 this, but he professed some most extraordinary views. 

 In a prize essay his object was to show that the 

 lower forms of algse were capable of being changed 

 into more highly organized species, or even into 

 species belonging to different families, and classes, of 

 the higher cellular plants. Subsequently, in another 

 treatise, he extended his observations to Infusoria, 

 and believed that he had observed their transmuta- 

 tion into algae.^ We are not prepared to go over the 

 evidence and report the conclusions, otherwise than 

 in the general manner indicated above, but we may 

 record the impressions and observations which were 

 made at the time upon the inferences drawn by him 

 from his experiments. " Firstly, the observations 

 cannot be considered conclusive, apart from all 

 prejudice either way, till a certain number of bodies, 

 ascertained to be precisely of the same nature, be 

 isolated, and the changes of these observed with 

 every possible precaution to avoid error. At present, 

 it seems that there is not by any means sufficient 

 proof that the objects in question really arise from 

 germs of the same nature. Secondly, there appears 

 too often in treatises of this description to be great 

 indistinctness as to the notion of what a species 

 really is. We know that in the course of develop- 

 ment higher bodies go through a vast variety of 



' F. T. Kutzing (Nordhausen), *' Uber die Verwandlung der Infu- 

 sorien in niedere Algenformen." (1844.) 



