BY WILLIAM J. BYRAM. 



be restored by a remarkable reversal of the process. Occasionally 

 two amceba are seen to approach each other, to meet, and 

 gradually fuse into one. There is an interchange of nuclear 

 material, and the result of the fusion is renovated powers of 

 reproduction by subdivision. If you ask me why this union and 

 interchange should effect this result, I can only answer " behind 

 the veil." But while you have been looking at your amoeba in a 

 spirit of lofty criticism, you have been forgetting one little fact. 

 If the amceba was not a remote ancestor of your own, something 

 very like it was. It is a striking confirmation of this fact that 

 the ova or egg cells from which the higher organisms are 

 developed are in their earlier stages indistinguishable from 

 amoebae. 



The diagram shows the young stages of the ova or egg-cells. 

 They are minute nucleated masses of protoplasm, from l/200th 

 to l/220th of an inch in diameter, which put out processes or 

 pseudopodia, perform the amoeboid movements, and correspond 

 very closely with the ordinary form of the amoeba. The mature 

 ovum, of which a diagram is now projected, has secreted a thin 

 translucent cell wall, and neither puts out processes nor exhibits 

 amoebiform motions. If you did not remember its earlier phases 

 you might not consider that there was any analogy whatever 

 between it and the amoeba. But the correspondence is very 

 strikingly shown by the fact that the amoeba itself at certain 

 times assumes what is known as the encysted condition, when it 

 draws in all its processes, develops a cell-wall, and no longer 

 shows the streauiing and difHuent movements characteristic of 

 the ordinary form. We thus see that the usual phase of the 

 amoeba corresponds to the young stage of the egg-cell, and the 

 encysted amoeba to the mature ovum. The amoeba, therefore, 

 begins to assume an interest and importance for us that we had 

 not thought. That in the ontogeny of each one of us there was 

 a time, when we were what it is, is an incontestable fact, and, 

 knowing this, we have no difficulty in realising what the law of 

 evolution declares, that in our phylogeny or race-history the 

 amoeba represents one of our earliest ancestors. The ancient 

 Egyptians used to have a skeleton at their feasts, with a 

 memento, " Such as he is you soon will be "; but the memento 

 before me lately has related to the beginning, for I never look at 

 an amceba without thinking, " Such as it is so once were you." 

 If you still think that you have no connection with such a 



