2 22 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



As the virtues of this infusion seemed to be getting 

 exhausted, on the same (tenth) day I transferred a 

 portion of the pellicle to the surface of a new weak 

 infusion of hay, which had been previously boiled. On 

 the following day the Monads were found to have in- 

 creased very much in size, and so also had many of 

 the Amoebse, Several large ovoid Monads on measure- 

 ment were found to be as much as xoVo" ii^ length — 

 they had, in fact, become nearly twice as long as the 

 largest of those which had existed in the old infusion. 



Five days afterwards (sixteenth day), when another 

 portion of this transferred pellicle was examined, all 

 the Monads were found to have disappeared, with the 

 exception of a few which were in a motionless state 

 and were apparently about to be converted into Ama^bas. 

 These latter organisms existed in teeming myriads : a 

 portion of them had become encysted, whilst of the rest 

 about one half were active, and the others, though not 

 encysted, were almost motionless and more or less 

 granular. On further examination, it was found that 

 the granular Amoebis (Fig. 58, i-m) were organisms in 

 a dying state, and that the contained particles were 

 new living units which gradually developed into Bacteria. 

 All the stages of this development were to be seen. 

 Thus there were a considerable number of languid 

 Amoebae which merely displayed a slight increase in the 

 customary number of minute particles situated near or 

 around the nucleus. There were others in which these 

 minute granules were more numerous ; and others still, 



