ARCHER, ON STEPHANOSPHERA PLUVIALIS. 197 
analogies as regards contractility in the vegetable protoplasm 
as compared with the animal, and as demonstrative thereof, 
special attention has been directed to several of the now 
familiar phenomena displayed by certain vegetable cells. 
Such are the vibratory movements of cilia, and drawing in of 
these, the circulatory movements of the cell-contents, as in 
the hairs of the stamens of Tradescantia, &c., the contrac- 
tile vacuole in Gonium, Volvox, &c., and so forth. But while 
these are, I think, unquestionably to a considerable, but 
more limited, extent, manifestations of the same phenomenon, 
it seems to me that none of these cases present so exact an 
analogy, strongly as they may indicate it, with the rhizopo- 
dous contractility, as do the ameeboid bodies of Stephano- 
spheera, of Volvox, of the Moss-radicles, and of Rhizidium. 
The amceboid bodies of Stephanosphera seem to display this 
rhizopodous contractility in greatly the most marked or ex 
aggerated degree, as their vigorous and energetic powers of 
locomotion indicate; in them, and indeed in those of Volvox, 
of the Moss, and of Rhizidium, the pseudopodal processes 
and their mode of protrusion and withdrawal, the flow of the 
granules, and the locomotion of the whole body, were in all 
respects analogous to the similar phenomena evinced by a 
true Amceba. 
But I need hardly add, after what has been advanced, that 
I do not suppose for a moment that there was in these cases 
actually an absolute conversion of the vegetable cell into an 
animal. In the case of the Stephanospheera and of Rhizidum 
this condition is certainly but very temporary—a few hours 
at most, and the quasi-animal condition becomes relinquished 
for the strictly vegetable. In not one of the cases cited 
were there to be seen any foreign bodies of any kind within 
the substance of the amceboid structures. It may be said, 
indeed, so far as this bears upon the question, that itis only 
negative evidence; and in the case now brought forward 
there were very few, if any, foreign bodies at all existent in the 
material under examination. In his memoir, describing his 
recent and masterly researches on certain minute parasitic 
Fungi,* Professor de Bary makes the statement that not once 
in the course of his researches has he met with any case 
which would induce him to the view that any single one of 
those parasites owes its origin to the changed contents of any 
cell, or of any intercellular fluid, of the infested plants. How 
much the more unlikely, then, is it that a true animal could 
have such a beginning, if the contents of the cells of the host- 
* © Ann, des Sciences Naturelles,’ iy série, tome xx (“ Botanique”), p. 5; 
also ‘Flora’ (1863), p. 163, 
