ARCHER, ON STEPHANOSPHERA PLUVIALIS. 129 
memory, and always forgetting what their destination should 
be, or with what object they set out; or, as if they each had 
lost something, and all were laboriously and diligently 
making the best use of their locomotive powers, under the 
hallucination that there might be a hope of fortuitously 
stumbling upon it unawares! 
After having, I might almost say, disported themselves im 
the manner described for a period from about twenty-four to 
thirty-six hours, their locomotive powers began to wane and 
their energy and agility to flag; presently their onward pro- 
gress became gradually slower and slower, and the lobose 
pseudopodal processes alternated more and more lazily and 
languidly, until, by degrees becoming more and more inert, 
they finally one by one became altogether still. At this 
point, I greatly regret, my observations on this marvellous 
condition also came toan end. Just as they had all or nearly 
all acquired a rotund protococcoid figure, having been obliged 
to leave them, the slide, upon which they were, became dried 
up during my absence, nor could I find at any other period 
any more of these Stephanospheree undergoing this remark- 
able phase. But, from finding in the bottle whence these were 
taken, numbers in the protococcoid condition, it is probable, 
had these special examples not been interrupted or thwarted 
intheir development, that they too would have passed from 
the amceboid to the protococcoid condition. 
1 presume I need. not here delay by urging the now, I 
believe, universally acknowledged claims of Stephanosphera, 
and of the remaining Volvocinacee, to rank in the vegetable 
kingdom. ‘Their whole affinities are with certain alge of the 
Chlorospermatous class. Hydrodictyon utriculatum, an in- 
dubitable alga (not found in Ireland), presents at every step 
of its history points in common with Stephanosphera; and 
both Hydrodictyon and the Volvocinacez are closely related 
to Pediastree, and to the genus Polyedrium (Nag.), &c. &c. 
So intimate is this affinity, that I conceive those who would 
now refer Volvocinacee to the animal kingdom would be com- 
pelled to include Hydrodictyon and Pediastreze in the transfer, 
and, so far as I could see, by an inevitable sequence, the 
whole of the Confervoidez (Chlorospermez) likewise ; which, 
Ineed hardly remark, would be simply absurd. 
There was a time when locomotion effected by the agency 
of cilia was regarded as an infusorial or animal character- 
istic; now it is well known that very many undoubted 
vegetables, in some phase of their existence, are provided 
with these appendages. ‘There wasa time when the existence 
of the so-called “ eye-speck’’? was regarded as a peculiarly 
