696 GEOFFREY LAl'AOE 



on another page of the same work, that he heheves with 

 Greef that the so-calkd ' Glanzkorper ' of Pelomyxa develop 

 into small amoebae similar to those which he saw pass out of 

 the Pelomyxa. From his account it seems likely that he has 

 confused various difft^runt structures, true ' Glunzkorper ', 

 fungal and Flagellate food, and ingested small amoebae. 

 This is only another instance of the difficulties which arise, 

 especially for other workers, when obser\ations on liAing 

 specimens are not controlled by y)ro|)erly made ))erin;inent 

 preparations. 



Penard, in the same work, makes other references to the 

 occurrence of similar ' embryos ' in the amoebae which he 

 names A . n i t i d a , A . \' i 1 1 o s a , A . a n n u 1 a t a , A . 

 nobilis, A. terricola; and in Ehizopods hke Difflugia, 

 Diaphorodon. and, above all, in Nebehdae, he found bodies 

 which he thought ma}' have been reprcjductive in nature. In 

 most of these cases he gives figures which certainly suggest 

 strongly that he was dealing with amoebae which were ingesting 

 and extruding again other amoebae of the same or other 

 species. In the 'embryos' of A. nobilis he saw 'little 

 diatoms ' and ' little grains which appear to proceed from 

 digestion ' ; and those of A . n i t i d a contained ' the appear- 

 ance of little grains of starch or little diatoms, which them- 

 selves seemed to be in course of digestion'. 

 But he does not seem to have thought it necessary to explain 

 how these ' embryos ', while inside their ' parents ', had been 

 able to ingest their diatoms. It seems verv likelv that these 

 ' embryos ' were similar in nature to the spheres in my amoebae 

 and that Penard fell into the same error as that from which 

 I was only saved by the study of permanent preparations. 



Grosse-Allermami (13), in a studj-^ of Amoeba terricola, 

 saw, in two instances onh, a swollen amoeba full of small 

 spheres of 30-40 ii in diameter, and he supposed that he was 

 dealing with the end result of multiple tission. Penard (21J) 

 saw somewhat similar phenomena in the same amoeba, but 

 regarded the spheres as parasites which had developed inside 

 the Amoeba terricola and which were set free by its death. 



