66 GEORGE ALFRED BAITSELL 



a very noticeable decrease in size; a cessationof practically all loco- 

 motion had occurred and the animals were still more opaque. If ex- 

 amined with the low power, the ex-conjugants would appear more 

 as motionless black specks than as living organisms. Within the 

 next fifteen to eighteen hours the individuals would invariably die. 

 The entire course of the degeneration occupied from thirty to thir- 

 ty-six hours after the separation had occurred. Ex-conjugants 

 which at the time of the separation in the morning appeared as act- 

 ive, normal individuals would, when examined in the afternoon of 

 the same day, be found to be undergoing the degeneration as out- 

 lined above. By the following morning a large percentage of 

 these would have disappeared and the remainder would be in a still 

 further stage of degeneration. During the course of the day these 

 would all die. In all the large number of ex-conjugants under ob- 

 servation, over 230 individuals in all, not a single one lived forty- 

 eight hours after separation and not a single one divided. 



The death of one of the ex-conjugants was observed under the 

 microscope. This individual at the time of separation was appar- 

 ently normal in every way. At the time of the observation, some 

 thirty-three hours later, it was in the last stages of degeneration 

 and under the high magnification appeared as a small, motionless 

 dark ob j ect. The only evidence of life was a slight beating of a few 

 cilia. The animal was in the regular beef medium and the obser- 

 vations were not such as to injure it in any way. After having 

 been under observation for about one-half hour the animal suddenly 

 appeared to explode and what had the second before been living 

 protoplasm was now simply an amorphous mass. 



In an endeavor to get some of the ex-conjugants to live a num- 

 ber of experiments were tried. Some were isolated, after separ- 

 ation, in various other media such as strong beef extract solution, 

 hay infusions and the 'varied environment' medium. In all of 

 these experiments only one of the ex-conjugants resulting from 

 the separation of any one pair of conjugants was experimented 

 with, the other ex-con jugant not being disturbed but simply left in 

 the medium in which the separation had taken place. None of the 

 methods used had any effect whatsoever in prolonging the lives of the 

 ex-conjugants, all of them passing through similar degenerative 



