124 WwW. ARCHER. 
rinthula-cells can carry on their wandering only when sup- 
ported by these filamentary tracks. 
4, The wandering cells combine anew in clusters and pass 
over into an encysted state, each cell acquiring a firm enve- 
lope, all held together by the common basic substance. 
5. From each cyst, after a rest of some time, four globules 
are formed which extremely probably become changed into 
young Labyrinthula-cells. 
Thus, notwithstanding the great resemblance, there are 
some points of difference of such seeming great importance 
as possibly to forbid the present organism being subordinated 
to the Labyrinthulee. In the first place the “ spindles ” are 
not nucleated, in the next they do not (seemingly) ever be- 
come themselves encysted, but the aggregate group, matrix, 
colouring granules and all, become repeatedly so, and that in 
a cellulose coat; in the third place, Cienkowski’s Labyrin- 
thuleze do not possess other colouring granules besides the 
spindles—in the present form there are green and red alter- 
nating; and, in the fourth place, the former do not show 
contractile vacuoles, a conspicuous feature in the latter, under 
certain conditions ; nor did Cienkowski see any organisms 
incepted into their mass; and, lastly, Cienkowski’s forms did 
not evince any parasitic nature. 
The first objection seems to be the most important. Might 
it, however, possibly be met by assuming the spindles in the 
present form to be, as it were, all nucleus? Cienkowski 
offers no conjecture as to any seeming or probable purpose of 
the strange wandering of the spindles, save “ to reach the 
periphery of the drop, or to get out of the water ;” still he 
says they can recede. The object would naturally seem to 
be to transport the spindles to a distance from the primary 
mass, and to distribute them around in order to lay the founda- 
tion of a number of new centres. Quite in a similar manner 
the spindles in the present form tend to pass away from the 
original centre, and masses, accompanied indeed by a greater 
or less quantity of the basic matrix, are sometimes left apart 
to form new centres. I cannot say, indeed, whether or not a 
single spindle would have the power to lay the foundation of 
a new and independent centre of growth, like to that which 
it left behind, but it might not be unreasonable to suppose 
that in this way the slender filamentary tracks, reaching far 
and wide, may be simply the medium of transporting to, and 
depositing these spindles within, the tissues of the adjacent 
submerged plants, in the way which we have seen it to occur, 
there to develope. 
As to the second objection, that the individual spindles do 
