116 W. ARCHER. 



Hertwig announces that the hyaline smooth test does not 

 become coloured either by iodine, nor by it along with sul- 

 phuric acid, and that it does not become altered under 

 mineral acids or alkalies ; but whether it contains any siliceous 

 constituent he would leave undecided. 



Not only is the test thus bilaterally symmetrical but the 

 body-mass also ; it is sharply contoured and of a " retort- 

 shape," of which the " neck^^ passes out through the oral 

 opening, broadening out there into contact with the test, the 

 only place indeed where such occurs ; from the necklike part 

 are given off the pseudopodia (as originally correctly de- 

 scribed by myself) and this portion, as in similar forms, 

 Hertwig denominates the " pseudopodial stem." 



Sometimes the body all but fills the test, sometimes it 

 occupies only a small portion of the cavity — seemingly partly 

 dependent on degree of nutrition, partly on reproductive 

 conditions (as will be seen). Hertwig^s description of the 

 sarcode body and nucleus seems to agree with my own. A 

 single or double contractile vesicle of variable size occurs in 

 the anterior part of the body, the contractions very slow and 

 uncertain. 



The pseudopodia are also described by Hertwig pretty 

 much as I did, with the exception, of course, that the com- 

 plete fusion of these into a common matrix — the " Cysto- 

 phrys state " — was wrongly interpreted by me ; in this state 

 they project around more or less irregularly from the common 

 matrix, and the rarity of the mutual inosculation of the ultimate 

 branches in this condition must be attributed solely to the 

 radiating arrangement preventing their coming into mutual 

 contact. But if they come into contact they will inosculate, 

 and even whole bundles of them can exceptionally do so and 

 form a long protoplasm-plate at one side; but usually, 

 indeed, they are shorter in the Cystophrys-state than in the 

 ordinary more or less isolated condition. Hertwig rightly 

 states the current within the pseudopodia to be a very slow 

 one, especially as compared to the vigorous Hoav in those of 

 a Gromia fluviatilis. Hertwig dwells on the remarkable up- 

 and-down fitful progress, alternately from one individual to 

 another, by way of the uniting pseu.dopodia, of masses of 

 plasma, containing granules — a proof of the intimate organic 

 relations of the individuals composing a colony. 



The author mentions the success with which, for a time 

 at least, he had been able to preserve examples of this 

 organism in a tolerably natural appearance by the applica- 

 tion of osmic acid (1 per cent.); the pseudopodia collapsed 

 only a little, became somewhat varicose, the granules becom- 



