ARCHER, ON STEPHANOSPHERA PLUVIALIS. 131 
of many of Ehrenberg’s guondam Infusoria, now known to be 
zoospores of alge, &c. 
But, what the special import of this curious and remarkable 
exceptional temporary condition in Stephanospheera, which I 
have sought to describe, might be, I cannot dare to take upon 
myself to conjecture. However, if we seek for and find pre- 
cedents or examples in the vegetable cell, though some of them 
may be evinced even in a much less marked degree, of that 
peculiar contractility exhibited by this organism, while it 
would not detract from nor diminish the marvel, it would 
at least lessen the surprise natural on at first witnessing or 
considering the phenomenon. 
Let us look back, then, in the first place, for a moment, to 
one or two conditions of Stephanospheera itself, and I think 
we shall find that a similar phenomenon presents itself to that 
forming the subject of this paper, but in a far less marked, 
therefore, at first sight, in a far less notable and surprising 
degree. 
Let us refer to the typal full-grown Stephanosphera ;* 
and, as has been stated, we frequently find the protoplasm of 
the primordial cells drawn out at each extremity into several 
filiform, somewhat branched, colourless prolongations, mostly 
in contact with the inner surface of the hyaline envelope-cell. 
We find, preparatory to the primordial cells undergoing the 
Protococcoid or other intermediate developmental condition, 
that these protoplasmic elongations are drawn in. Now, 
except as regards the length of time occupied in the process, 
I do not see any essential difference between this and the 
action of the pseudopodal processes in my amceboid bodies— 
the one, in the ordinary course of its existence, takes hours to 
project and again to withdraw what, with equal right, may be 
called ‘‘ pseudopodal processes,” while in the other the act 
was momentary. It is true that, in describing these proto- 
plasmic prolongations in the primordial cells, Cohn and 
Wichurat suggest that these in the young Stephanosphera 
adhere, here and there, at certain points, to the inner surface 
of the envelope-cell; and that during the expansion of the 
latter, as it approaches maturity, these prolongations of the 
protoplasm may thereby be gradually drawn out. But one 
frequently sees some Stephanosphere in which the primordial 
cells are not thus drawn out into these slender prolongations ; 
indeed, I find them constantly so when kept some time in 
the house in semi-obscurity, and therefore these do not seem 
to be due to a structural peculiarity, but to the innate power 
* Colm.,id'/c., pl. vig 29.4, 5, 677. 
+ Ueber Stephanospheera,’ loc. cit., p. 16. 
VOL. V.— NEW SER. K 
