410 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



very quickly passed on to different conditions. Their 

 rays became shortened, and large vacuoles appeared and 

 disappeared in the interior of corpuscles which were now 

 almost spherical (/). These spherical corpuscles partly 

 transformed themselves into tolerably active Amcebas [g) 

 and partly into rather sluggish Monads (^)5 provided with 

 a flagellum at each extremity, which, at the time of 

 observation, were mostly vibrating very slowly. 



Five days afterwards the above-named bodies had for 

 the most part disappeared, though the filament then con- 

 tained myriads of ovoid ciliated Infusoria about y^V' 

 in length, and of the simplest description (_/") — closely 

 resembling Dujardin's Enchelys or embryo Paramecia. 



Observations of a somewhat similar nature have 

 been detailed by Dr. Braxton Hicks i, who saw the 

 chlorophyll corpuscles of certain moss-radicles notably 

 increase in size and become cellular, whilst their con- 

 tents divided into three, four, or more motionless 

 segments. The modified corpuscles remained for some 

 months in this condition ; though after this time, when 

 some of them were placed in the sun, the contained 

 segments seemed to be rapidly converted into very 

 active, faintly - green, granular, and bi - flagellated 

 Monads. The testimony of Dr. Gros, given long 

 before, is also to the same effect. He says he has 

 seen the chlorophyll corpuscles of large Euglenx 

 individualize themselves, greatly increase in size, and 

 gradually become colourless and finely granulated. 



^ See Appendix D, p. Ixxi. 



