478 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



with the exception of mobility, possessing all the 

 characters of that constituting an Amoeba. By the side 

 of these there are other masses without any apparent 

 membranous envelope, whose substance is similarly 

 glutinous and granulated ; whilst elsewhere other 

 globules are found, whose development is undoubtedly 

 less advanced, showing a less refractive substance, 

 and an irregular granulation which appears more on the 

 surface than in the interior. . . . The quantity of this 

 glutinous matter increases as the cell becomes older_, and 

 its different states necessarily indicate a slow modifica- 

 tion of the nutritive juices of the plant — a modification 

 which tends in a manner to animalize it, since from 

 this very matter there arises, as we shall now see, a 

 multitude of Infusorial animalcules. ... In their course 

 from one extremity to the other of the cell, the different 

 globules, whose formation I have endeavoured to de- 

 scribe, finally attach themselves to the internal wall, 

 and form upon different parts of it an irregular layer, 

 which is transparent and more or less mammellated. It 

 is then that the Infusoria make their appearance : 

 Monads, Amoebae, Keronae, Vorticellx, Actinophrys, 

 Rotifers, all appear, all show themselves successively 

 whilst passing through different stages of development, 

 and in from fifteen to twenty-one days the vessel is 

 crowded ^. All of them commence by the vesicular pro- 



' M. Nicolet says : — ' A vessel prepared on the 29th of April, and 

 containing a single cell of Chara, yielded by the 15th of May following, 

 in addition to an incalculable number of [smaller] Infusoria, one hundred 



