238 E. RAY LANKESTER. 
istic feature presented by Chlamydomyxa. It must be dis- 
tinguished altogether from the straightening and expanding 
movement of the mass of filaments; at the same time it is not 
manifested until the filaments have become—some at least of 
them—straightened and free. Then as such a filament separates 
itself, and as it were slowly pushes itself forth in a straight 
line, first one, then another, and finally many of the oat-shaped 
corpuscles are seen to advance along it. They move slowly in 
one direction as a rule, stopping sometimes after a consider- 
able advance, and then resuming movement. They do not all 
travel at the same rate on one filament. I saw on several occa- 
sions one corpuscle overtake another and glide over 
the back (so to speak) of its more slowly moving companion, 
and advance in front of it. Archer also witnessed this pheno- 
menon in his larger species. Further, the corpuscles do not all 
travel in one direction on one and the same filament. Some 
are advancing towards the free extremity of the filament, whilst 
others are travelling away from it. The corpuscles travelling 
in opposite directions meet and pass one another, or sometimes 
on meeting come to a standstill, then after a time the two 
separate from one another, reversing their previous direction 
of movement. These movements are not novel in themselves, 
but similar to the movements of the granules in the psendo- 
podium of an Actinospherium or in the threads of the vacuo- 
lated cell protoplasm of the Tradescantia hair. What is 
peculiar in the case of Chlamydomyxa is this, viz. that the 
moving corpuscles are oat-shaped bodies of definite and uniform 
size, and that there is no visible coating of streaming proto- 
plasm embedding both them and the filament upon which they 
move (as there is in the case of the pseudopodium of Actino- 
spheerium). 
I am inclined myself, from a careful consideration of my 
own observations on Chlamydomyxa and Actinospherium, 
and of Cienkowski’s observations upon Labyrinthula, to adopt 
the view that the filaments of Chlamydomyxa are inert pro- 
ducts of the metamorphosis of its protoplasm, which have a 
certain amount of durability, but can be rapidly absorbed by 
