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thought, to render the conclusion decisive. Not only in the most 
rhizopodous form could the yellowish pair of longitudinal bodies 
running along both sides and enclosing a central space, as seen in 
the normal form of each monad in the typical state, as well as a 
characteristic sharply marked dark granule, be readily seen, though 
often more or less disturbed in position or distorted, but further, 
examples were not wanting in which the detached monad, so to 
say, was there still intact, and at the same time (by no means 
faint) indications of a sarcodic envelope were present and pseudo- 
podial processes evident. With the hope of being able to con- 
firm this curious observation, should he have an opportunity 
during the coming summer, Mr. Archer had intended to have kept 
it merely in his “mind’s eye.” Meantime, however, Professor 
Haeckel’s beautiful account of his remarkable marine organism 
Magosphera planula, referred by him to a new order—Catal- 
lacta—had made its appearance (‘ Biologische Studien,’ p. 139, 
t. 5). An inspection of his plate (which Mr. Archer thought 
was a pity had not been printed in the natural actual 
colour of the organism, or else black) would suggest the affinity 
of Magosphera rather with Synura, Syncrypta, and Uvella (as he 
thought he should identify those types with what he had regarded 
as their representatives, as occurring at least with us), than with 
what may be, perhaps, designated the Volvocinacee proper 
(Volvox, Pandorina, Stephanosphera), and naturally the fore- 
going observations at once recurred to his mind, not to speak of 
those of Dr. Hicks and of others on Volvox globator, and what 
he had witnessed himself in that form as well as Pandorina and 
Stephanosphera. He was much interested, therefore, to find that 
Haeckel himself in the text strongly points to the relationship 
of his new genus Magosphera and Synura (Ehr.), going so far as 
to say that if the two genera coincided in development they 
would be identical ; he had, however, himself but once met with 
the latter form. In at least the form occurring with us, which, 
notwithstanding the contrary view of so able an authority as Mr. 
Carter, seemed as yet to Mr. Archer to be truly the Synura wvella 
(Ehr.), and no¢ a developmental state of Volvox globator, Mr. 
Archer has not, indeed, seen any state showing rhizopodous cha- 
racteristics, but the condition described of Syncrypta is strongly 
suggestive of at least its occasional occurrence here also. However, 
if onlyin the latter of the two formswhich Mr. Archer thought thus 
identifiable the rhizopodous or amceboid condition had presented 
itself, both undergo (at least occasionally) an encysted condition. 
In the organism occurring in this country which as yet seems justi- 
fiably to be identified with Synwra uvella (Ehr.), only a few, 
not each and all, of the monads of each colony become encysted ; 
these encysted individuals retain their position at the apex of the 
ultimate branch of the dichotomously ramified dendroid struc- 
ture sustaining the whole colony (with the appearance, indeed, as 
if they were joined by the “tails ’’), and such form comparatively 
large globular cases attached to the end of the branch by a minute 
