Infusorial Circuit of Generations. 231 



rather denselj 2>unctuated cloud, rim up like a cumulus; its tips 

 mostly warty as with (dotted) strawberries, a sort of primordial 

 " framboesia." It is to this form that I wish to call particular 

 attention, since it represents the most minute ]iiJiase of individual 

 animate life visible at present under the known powers of the 

 microscope : being the ultimate retrograde development-phase, as 

 well as the first manifestation, common to aU such soft primitive 

 sarcode bodies, from the " Yorticellan " to the most bulky " Para- 

 mecian " forms. And from each httle dot in these " clouds of life " 

 a separate Vorticella can be seen to develop ! It is here, indeed, 

 at this first visible advent or exordium of animate life, and the 

 resurrection of millions of germs through the siDontaneous dissolu- 

 tion of a single one, that the last nubecular ynicroscopic perceptions 

 closely resemble the last nebular telescopic as well as the theoretic 

 ones of Laplace's cosmogony. 



For the present let us call such often-repeated forms of retro- 

 grade self-dissolution and self-multiphcation a germinal nubecula. 

 Such likewise occur in a very closely analogous form in the self- 

 maceration (of the engulfed pencil-beads and the enlarged "oidium"- 

 joints) of the yeast or " zymotic " fungus. The difierence being, 

 that in the case of animal infusoria the dots remain affixed, and, 

 after jerking apart, rapidly travel on separately with a vacillating 

 motion resulting from their warped surface {true Zoogloea Termo 

 Cohn; not that oi Klob), while in the case of the mucous or poly- 

 poid fungine diffluence (erroneously called by the above name by 

 Klob), the component blunt-cyhndrical Cacteria are not mutually 

 fixed, but all simultaneously slowly move onward and apart in slimy 

 trails, without a perceptible rotation, simply quivering, and ulti- 

 mately enlarge into fibres. Of the blach or " indissoluble " nebula- 

 form of the zymotic or yeast-fungus I have already treated in the 

 ' St. Louis Medical Eeporter,' Jan. 1st, 1868 (Zymotic Condition, 

 &c.), and ' Proc. A. A. A. S.,' 1870, et ante. Neither the animal 

 molecules nor the (coated) " Cacteria " join into file, as do the fer- 

 meutic sarcode-vibrios, being naked. 



The watchful observer will have opportunity of witnessing 

 another sort of " fertile dissolution " of the more bulky Vorticellae, 

 by the discharge of certain globular, granular " pellets," surrounded 

 with other adhering and jerJcingr particles — (probably the "acineta" 

 of some authors) — while containing the " currant-shaj)ed " yolks, — 

 hereafter to be described, together with its " amoeba " or pseudo- 

 podial dissolution, when treating of the so-called " Paramecium 

 Aurelia." 



A direct onward evolution of Vorticella I had occasion to realize 

 on the fetid scum cuticle of a putrescent aquarium. All the 

 Vorticellee which, in dense clusters, lined the under surface of that 

 membrane, or animal pellicle, were found to elongate into a sort of 



