136 ROMANCE OF LOW LIFE AMONGST PLANTS. 



reproduction the result of a continued fission ? At 

 present there is silence ! 



Speculations have not been wanting, but none 

 with any great claim to plausibility. We will submit 

 one which was proposed fifty years ago. 



Dr. Unger, in the year 1840, expressed his views as 

 to the nature of Oscillatoria, in which he enunciated 

 his belief in their animal nature. " I did not propose," 

 he says, " to enter into a comparative examination of 

 the OscillatoriEe, but to combat a system, according 

 to which the forms at present known ought to be 

 necessarily referred to some vegetable genus, com- 

 posed of elements very heterogeneous. When Agardh, 

 speaking of some Oscillatoria which move with the 

 greatest ease, states that they have an articulated 

 head which they move after the manner of a beak, he 

 certainly by this points to an animal nature. The 

 characters assigned by Agardh to the Oscillatoria 

 animalis of Carlsbad are far more striking : according 

 to his expressions, it does not oscillate ; it has not 

 the pendulum-like movement ; but it crawls like a 

 worm, and turns itself in every direction. It is also 

 able to move itself freely in the water, differing thus 

 from the others, which are only able to do this when 

 they rest on the common substratum. It moves the 

 head, which is linguiform, as the mollusca move their 

 tentacula ; in a word, animal movement cannot be 

 denied them. Moreover, if we refer to his own 

 opinion, which he expresses when describing the 

 Oscillatoria of Carlsbad, that their characters depend 

 chiefly on their mode of life, we shall be so much the 

 more induced to consider these productions rather 



