NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
37 
which embryonal areas gradually appear : as a result of segmentation 
in these embryonal areas, specimens of Monas lens , in diameter, 
more or less suddenly make their appearance ; they increase in size, 
occasionally assume an amoeboid appearance for a time, and are ulti- 
mately transformed into real Amoeba). The transition is effected by 
the loss of the flagellum, the appearance of vacuoles in their interior, 
and the simultaneous manifestation of polymorphism and a creeping 
mode of progression ; at the same time a nuclear corpuscle develops 
in the interior, and the whole animal grows considerably. At last 
the Amoebic gradually cease to exhibit their characteristic move- 
ments, whilst they become more or less spherical and motionless. 
Ultimately a firm bounding membrane is produced, and they pass into 
the encysted condition, in which, although slightly smaller in size, 
they constitute spherules T g 1 ^ o" in diameter. On the removal of 
some of this pellicle to the surface of a fresh infusion, the Monads 
and Amoebns greatly increased in size ; all the Monads gradually 
became converted into Amoeba), and some of these at first went 
through the ordinary process of encystment, though at last (on 
account of some more sudden change in the fluid) they seemed sud- 
denly to lapse into a morbid state. They were apparently unable to 
encyst themselves ; and not being capable of continuing as Amoebas, 
there sprang up in their interior a teeming progeny of new units 
(Bacteria), the production of which occasioned the final dissolution of 
the organisms in which they were evolved. 
NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 
The Best Mode of Carmine Staining the Tissues. — On this sub- 
ject a valuable paper appears in the last number of the ‘ Lens,’ by no 
less an authority than Col. Dr. Woodward. The writer specially 
alludes to carmine staining, and speaking of the supposed power 
which it gives of distinguishing living from dead tissues, he guards 
his readers against the hasty assumption that these important distinc- 
tions may safely be judged to indicate anything further than chemical 
differentiation. If the parts stained by carmine are entitled to be re- 
garded as possessing any more significant vital properties, such as 
would justify the designation “ germinal matter” bestowed upon them 
by Dr. Beale, and after him by so many English and American micro- 
scopists, this must depend upon quite other facts than their relations 
to carmine. Staining by carmine may be effected in a number of 
ways. The preparation originally employed was the simple ammo- 
niacal solution, used first by Gerlach. It has subsequently been pro- 
posed to add glycerine or alcohol, or both, to the ammouiacal solution. 
Various formulas of this character are strongly recommended in the 
books, and any of them can be made to answer. Thiersch, however, 
correctly pointed out, in his work on Epithelial Cancer, that the 
ammoniacal solution of carmine is not staple. First made, it stains 
less energetically than after a few days, when certain ill-defined de- 
