80 
Rhizopods in London.— 
“ Animalia muta 
Quis generosa putet nisi fortior,..?’? Juwven., Sat. viii, 56. 
Many who could easily afford means and leisure for a 
microscope, perhaps have never heard of, or seem en- 
tirely to ignore the very existence of those singular crea- 
tures which go under the name of root-footed animals, or 
Rhizopods—a rather puzzling, though very interesting 
class of Protozoa, that seems to point to the very dawn 
of life. Borrowing for themselves the silly sentence of 
the Roman satirist, quoted above, ‘‘ What are they to us?” 
they would say, ‘these paltry creatures! these helplessly 
weak animalcules,. in which we do not see a spark of life, no 
vitality, no animation at all? Go, we shall have nothing to 
do with them!” Such is their peremptory answer. Yet a 
fresh current of better feelings in favour of these admirable 
creatures seems to be setting in, since the indefatigable Mr. 
Archer of Dublin has called the attention of his brother 
microscopists to that special group of freshwater Rhizopods 
which, whatever may be the object of our researches, rarely 
fail to come under the field of the microscope. 
A great difficulty, however, which still remains to be sur- 
mounted in order to render their study more attractive, is,— 
“‘ How to get at them?” It is all very well for the sanguine 
correspondent of the ‘ Quarterly Microscopical Journal’ to 
ask,—‘** How it is that we do.not hear of any of Mr. Archer’s 
beautiful forms from English localities?’ Unless we can 
show our tryo-microscopists some easier and more alluring way 
to procure them, without travelling far off from home, and 
being obliged—what is perhaps worse and more discouraging 
still—to tread upon treacherous bogs, and dabble in slimy 
pools, they will hardly be enticed to set their hands at work, 
and carry it on in earnest. 
When Dr. Wallich, some six or seven years ago, had 
noticed first the occurrence, in the immediate vicinity of this 
metropolis, of a certain undescribed sort of Ameba, which 
soon turned out to be the “ great shaggy changeling,” (4. 
villosa), a good deal of interest was awakened amongst the 
brotherhood of the microscope. That such an interest will 
not fail to be felt now that another not less amusing sort of 
Ameba has just been, and is yet easy to be found, not only in 
the vicinity, but within the boundaries of this same metro- 
polis, yea, I dare say, in any private garden, in any domestic 
pailful of water, is my hopeful idea. 
The new Ameba I am alluding to is that much wondered 
at, and really suprising sort ef animalcule which like a 
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