THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 225 



process of encystment, though at last (on account of 

 some more sudden change in the fluid) they seemed 

 suddenly to lapse into a morbid state. They were 

 apparently unable to encyst themselves, and not being 

 capable of continuing as Amoebae, there sprang up in 

 their interior a teeming progeny of new units {Bacteria)^ 

 the production of which occasioned the final dissolution 

 of the organisms in which they were evolved. 



Other changes, however^ took place in this same 

 infusion which deserve to be chronicled. On the sixth 

 day there were seen scattered throughout those portions 

 of the pellicle intervening between the embryonal areas 

 a multitude of solitary spherules, varying in size 

 from mere specks 30^00'' in diameter, or less, to bodies 

 5" Wo'' i^ diameter. They were colourless, quite motion- 

 less, and appeared to be solid and almost homogeneous 

 masses of plasma rather than vesicular bodies (Fig. 59, 

 a). There were merely faint indications of granules in 

 their interior, and no evidence of a differentiated outer 

 membrane. None of them seemed to be undergoing 

 processes of self-division^ and each appeared to have 

 grown up in the situation in which it was seen '. 

 These corpuscles gradually became more numerous on 

 to the tenth day, though they underwent no appreciable 



^ These bodies were evidently quite different from Monas and its 

 amoeboid derivatives, all of which shrivelled very much when mounted in 

 glycerine-jelly, though the corpuscles which I have just been describing 

 underwent no change of this kind. 

 VOL. II. Q 



