ON PELOMYXA VIRIDTS. 371 



The food sometimes lies in food vacuoles, while at other 

 times the surface of the food particles is actually in contact 

 with the protoplasm. 



Occasionally I have observed, when a large piece has lain in 

 a large vacuole, pseudopodia protruded from the vacuolar wall 

 and reflected over the surface of the food particle. 



Physiology. 



I have tried but without success to demonstrate the activity 

 of the chlorophyll. The animal does not readily allow of 

 much experiment, as it almost always dies after any manipula- 

 tion. Treatment with iodine has, moreover, failed to demon- 

 strate the presence of starch. The enormous number of the 

 symbiotic bacteria is correlated doubtless with the activity of 

 the chlorophyll. 



I have tried by putting them together under a cover-glass 

 to get two individuals to fuse together, but without success. 

 On the other hand, I have often observed two pseudopodia of 

 the same individual form and fuse together at their distal 

 extremities, so as to leave for a time a hole right through the 

 animal. Further, I have several times cut a specimen in half 

 with a sharp scalpel, and kept the two halves living for some 

 time, and by placing the two halves close together have 

 induced them to fuse together again. 



I have also teased specimens into fragments with a pair of 

 needles, but in that case the fragments have at once com- 

 menced to die. 



No information which we at present possess seems to me to 

 explain in any way why the halves of a divided individual or 

 the peripheral extremities of long pseudopodia protruded by 

 any one individual should freely reunite, while separate indi- 

 viduals will do nothing of the kind. 



Gulliver's Views. — Since writing the above my attention 

 has been drawn to a note on the minute structure of Pelo- 

 myxa palustris by Dr. G. Gulliver.^ The author believes, in 

 the first place, that the exoplasm is permanently differentiated 



' 'Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society,' 1888, p. 11. 



