100 HICKSj ON VEGETABLE AMOEBOID BODIES. 



NoAv if these points be granted^ and if avc follow out the 

 farther inferences they suggest, it woukl by no means be a 

 matter of surprise if other portions of the vegetable kingdom 

 exhibited a similar state. Indeed, if observers were carefully 

 to note all appearances of the vegetable cell in its various 

 positions, -when divested of its rigid cell-wall by solution or 

 by dehiscense, I believe we should find it a common con- 

 dition for the cndoplast, either coloured or colourless, 

 and possessing a certain amount of density' on its external 

 surface (primordial utricle), to have tlie power of amoeboid 

 motion. It is, of course, only occasionally that the cell is 

 placed under these circumstances, and therefore they are to 

 be watched for assiduously. 



I have already^ in the former paper referred to, pointed out 

 a power of motion in the cells in the gemmulc of ^"olvox, and 

 have noticed another instance, in a vegetable cell with green 

 contents, whose origin I was unable to trace. 



These considerations wdll help much to explain a condition 

 I have noticed nianj'' times among a mass of cells, which 

 have (as one of many) passed under the term " chlorococcus," 

 but which, in the present instance, I shall merely refer to as 

 the gonidia of mosses, leaving the description of their origin 

 untouched upon. Amongst these and their segmentations, if 

 placed in water, may be found some in which the natural 

 green colour is becoming paler, or destroyed ; and this takes 

 place either universally over the whole contents, as shown in 

 fig, 11, a, b, or at one part in c, or on the whole exterior, as 

 in d, e, f. This colourless protoplasm is endowed with power 

 of protruding and retracting processes ; in the latter-men- 

 tioned examples the layer is so thin on the Avhole exterior of 

 the green mass, that it at times can only be recognised except 

 by the slight protrusions which frequently take place. The 

 green contents within are being transformed into the colour- 

 less moving mass in all these instances. In the different 

 cells of the same portion under examination, we can observe 

 a gradually progressive change, till at last we find amoeboid 

 bodies moving about in all directions, free from all green 

 matter, containing only a few reddish-broAvn granules, and 

 some vacuoles (fig. 12). I have described the change in its 

 minimum state first, because if the more complete amoeboid 

 stage vrere the earliest under observation, it might at once be 

 conjectured that it was a true Amoeba, which had enclosed 

 the green cells, and was digesting them more or less com- 

 pletely. That this latter explanation is scarcely the correct 

 one, the following circumstances tend to show : 



rirstlv. If it be admitted that the vegetable endoplast of 



