QUARTERLY CHRONICLE. 277. 
Archiv fur Microskop. Anatomie (Max Schultze’s). Part ILI. 
1867. 
1.“ On the Genesis of the Spermatozoa,” by Von la 
Valette St. George.—This is the second part of a memoir 
by a very careful microscopist—the first part of which 
appeared in the first number of the ‘ Archiv’ (1865), together 
with one on the same subject, by F. Schweigger-Seidel, of 
which we gave a brief notice at the time. In this paper the 
author discusses the views of Schweigger-Seidel and Kolliker, 
and gives figures of the development of the spermatozoon of 
man, the dog, the mouse, the guinea-pig, the rabbit, the green- 
water frog, the speckled salamander, the earwig, the house- 
cricket, and two gasteropods. 
2. On the Structure and Development of the Labyrin- 
thule,” by Professor L. Cienkowski.—The organism to which 
the author has applied the name Labyrinthula, was found by 
him at Odessa beneath the marine alge which encrust the 
piles of the harbour of that town. It presented resemblances 
to the Fadenplasmodium described by him in ‘ Pringsheim’s 
Jahrbuch,’ vol. ii, p. 408; but he has made a careful study 
of it, and considers it the type of a new group of organisms. 
Three plates, one of which is coloured, illustrate this paper. 
The Labyrinthule are minute, orange-coloured bodies, form- 
ing reticulated threads which enclose spindel-shaped bodies. 
Cienkowski sums up their peculiarities of structure and 
development thus: 
(1) They present masses of cells which enclose a nucleus, 
and which increase in number by division, and possess a cer- 
tain degree of contractility, and which now and then are 
covered with a cortical substance. 
(2) These cells exude a fibrous substance, which forms a 
stiffand tree-like network, forming a branching frame-work. 
(3) The cells leave the mass and glide in different direc- 
tions along the framework to the periphery of the mass. The 
Labyrinthula cells can only continue their peregrinations when 
supported by this line of threads. 
(4) The moving cells unite in a new mass and become 
cysts, in which each cell is surrounded by a hard covering, 
the whole being held together by a rind-like substance. 
(5) After some time four small granules are formed from 
eae cyst, which most likely become young Labyrinthula 
cells. 
The author says he would leave the further examination of 
the development of Labyrinthula to future researches. For 
the first step this must be sufficient to show that these pecu- 
liar organisms bear no relation to any known group of beings 
VOL. VII.—NEW SER. U 
