10 THE MICROSCOPE. 
ment in common with some of the more highly organized infusorians. 
It has also a gliding movement, very like that of an amceba, but 
never evolving pseudopodia as that does. 
Second, this our Astasia is subject to, or capable of: striking 
color changes. In truth it deserves to be called the chameleon in- 
fusoria. The colorless pellucid protoplasm, which mainly consti- 
tutes this living microscopic spec, has in it many vacuoles, and these 
seem to be in two series, the one series containing chlorophyll 
grains, and the other series granules of red pigment. When the 
little creature is active, and is changing its form, as described above, 
it will assume these colors in alternations, sometimes both green 
and red at the same time, making it a charming little object. It is 
a wonderful sight to behold these changes of form and color—now 
a reddish spindle, anon a blushing red pear; next the globular form 
and the disc are assumed, and now a beautiful green predominates; 
and even here comes about a pretty color change from a grass-green 
emerald to a blue-green turquois. JI had hoped to make further 
study of my prize, but a few days of illness separated me from them, 
during which every specimen died. 
A MICROSCOPIC INFLATION. 
BY C, H, STOWELL. 
R. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES took occasion not long 
since to tell the medical students of Harvard College how 
large they would appear if placed under one of the Harvard micro- 
scopes. We must confess we have seen Harvard students who 
acted as if they were looking at themselves under one of these 
magnifying glasses. Dr Holmes says they would be as high as Mt. 
Etna, and correspondingly broad. 
Now if one of our Michigan University students could be 
magnified to the same degree that we magnified some blood 
corpuscles last evening he would reach from the level of the 
sea to the top of the highest mountain in Asia. In fact that 
would be a good chair for him, as his-head would be thirty 
thousand feet above this peak. 
In proportion to his height Mt. Blanc would be as a foot-stool 
to us. 
He could rest his shoulder on the base of Pike’s Peak in 
