20 



EAST KENT NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



January 2n(l, 1878, 



Among tlie various subjects of natural history exhibited ■vrere 

 some rather large and beautiful Amcebas, taken from Eeed 

 Pond by Mr. Dean. The Amoeba is an interesting subj ect to 

 the niicroscoj)ist, as the entire life history of this curious animal 

 has not yet been fullj' made out. The Amoebas are minute 

 gelatinous beings found in our fresh Avater, which have long 

 been a puzzle to, and a fruitful theme of discussion among, 

 naturalists. These creatures appear under a good glass like 

 minute patches of transparent jelly, having, under ordinary 

 circumstances, a diameter of from 1-oOOth to 1 -600th of an inch, 

 but remarkable for perpetually changing their form — at one 

 time shrinking into the appearance of a little globe, then 

 expanding into a flattened radiating disc, and again shooting out 

 portions of their substance in various directions, so as to assume 

 all sorts of shapes -with the greatest facility, deserving well the 

 names of Proteus and Amoeba bestowed upon them by zoolo- 

 gists. Their manner of multiplication is marvellous. One 

 Amoeba has been seen to divide itself into seventeen independent 

 creatures. Amcsbiform beings are not necessarily of an animal 

 nature ; for some have latterly been proved to occur in the cycle 

 of development of some of the simplest plants. 



Mr. Hammond exhibited a few slides of leaves of plants 

 jircpared and mounted by a fresh process for the microscope. In 

 a leaf of the common garden balsam the structure could be well 

 made out, viz., the cells of the epidermis showing stomata, or 

 breathing pores, by which the plant inhales the carbonic acid 

 from the air, which afterwards is split up in tlie cells containing 

 chlorophyll, the carbon being made use of to help form various 

 substances, as cellulose, starch, sugar, etc. ; and the oxj'gen 

 being again given up to the air. Also the bundles of vessels, 

 and cells containing different crystals, long and short raphides 

 in bundles, spha^raphides, dotted here and there all through the 

 leaf, and the peculiar bodies called tystoliths by the Prench 

 botanists, these hang by a stalk from the cell wall, the cell 



