CHAPTER 1 



INTRODUCTION 



"... The history of the living world can be summarised as the 

 elaboration of ever more perfect eyes within a cosmos in which there 

 is always something more to be seen." 



P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1959 



"(J'ai) . . . beaucoup d'observations au microscope electronique, mais 

 il manque tou jours celles qui doivent eclairer toutes les autres." 



E. Faure-Fremiet, letter to the author, 1960 



Today's biologist has at his disposal eyes more perfect in their 

 capacity to see than anything his predecessors could imagine. 

 Yet as always, organisms have to be tricked into exposing their 

 secrets to his view, and the arts of this trickery inevitably lag 

 behind the development of viewing tools. Presented rather 

 abruptly only two decades ago with the marvelous bonanza that 

 is the electron microscope, the biologist has had to undergo the 

 painful process, repeated anew with each new kind of material, 

 of learning how to trap his subjects in a state .fit to be seen. And 

 once he has accomplished this with reasonable success, he finds 

 himself in a subcellular world that has suddenly become enormous, 

 wherein he needs something more than just seeing to learn his 

 way around. 



So it is that, for all the grandeur of the prospect, every electron 

 microscopist finds himself sooner or later — if not both — in the 

 position wryly described by Professor Faure-Fremiet. We may 

 yield with thorough and joyous enthusiasm to the pleasures of 

 looking with our new eyes. But our comprehension of what we 

 see depends on a constant awareness of the vastness of the area 

 that has not yet been seen. 



For some of the very same reasons that have caused most 

 biologists of recent generations to leave them in limbo, the 

 protozoa offer material of unsurpassed excellence to the electron 

 microscopist. Where their small size once drove every investigator 



