MICROSCOPIC ORGANISMS IN INTESTINAL CANAL, 281 
dead, as faint changes in their form continued to manifest 
themselves with more or less distinctness. 
On the following day the cultivation continued to swarm with 
huge Amcebe. The body-substance was denser and less trans- 
parent than previously, and the nucleoli were very hard to dis- 
tinguish, and in many cases indeed quite irrecognisable. In 
some cases they had begun to form masses of epithelioid tissue 
consisting of various numbers of more or less fused individuals. 
The figure on a former page (Fig. 13), illustrative of conjugate 
Ameebe, was taken from this cultivation, and shows an example 
consisting of three individuals, each provided with a solitary 
large rigid vacuole. The Amcebz in these masses were perfectly 
motionless. ‘Twenty-four hours later the condition of the cul- 
tivation remained much as before. In still, dilated Amcbe 
which had passed into a condition of rigor in a preparation of 
the previous day, the nucleus was in some instances very clearly 
defined. It was here seen to form a distinct bilocular capsule, 
which in the course of disintegration of the Amcebe to which it 
belonged sometimes escaped entire into the fluid of the prepara- 
tion (Pl. XVIII, fig. 15). Hach of the cavities contained one 
sometimes two greenish discoid nucleoli of varying size. On 
the next day isolated and aggregate Amcebe continued to be 
present in extreme abundance in the cultivation. They were now 
almost all characterised by the extreme indistinctness and very 
small size of their nucleoli, so that these bodies m many cases 
could not be detected even when specially sought for. 
Two days later the aggregations of still Amcebe had become 
so large in many cases as to form distinct irregular whitish 
masses visible to the unaided eye on the surface of the medium, 
and in many of. these there were considerable numbers of 
smaller sporoid cells. Some of the large Amcebe were in the 
flattened scale-like condition, and here the nucleus was almost 
or entirely invisible. A large, slowly acting contractile vesicle 
was, however, frequently present, which generally was formed 
by the fusion of several originally independent vacuoles which 
underwent fusion as they expanded. Some of the large ad- 
herent Amcebe measured as much as40 x 37°5 uw and upwards. 
The sporangioid bodies continued to increase in numbers and 
size, and in the course of the next three days were entirely con- 
verted into masses of spores, hardly a single large Amebe 
remaining recognisable. The spores were somewhat larger, as a 
rule, than those ordinarily present in the normal sporangia 
developed on cow dung, but they varied considerably in size 
in individual instances, ranging from 5 to 10 w in diameter. 
Shortly after the sporangial masses were introduced into nutri- 
tive fluid, zoospores began to emerge from them. Most of 
VOL, XXI.—NEW SER. T 
