312 M. A. Schneider on Ophryocystis Butschlii. 



facies of the latter, nothing analogous to which is known 

 among the Sporozoa. 



2. Nuclei varying in number (from one to ten and perhaps 

 more) in these amoebiform creatures. This is an analogy 

 with some Amoebans, and in part, but distantly, Avith the 

 Myxosporidia. 



These nuclei may be regarded hypothetically as increasing 

 in number with the age and volume of the sarcodic mass 

 whicli contains them. It is extremely probable that at a 

 certain moment the latter divides into as many bodies as it 

 contains nuclei, these bodies remaining for a time united in 

 rosettes by delicate filaments, which are afterwards ruptured. 

 The individuals thus produced are the agents of reproduction 

 by the method indicated below. 



3. Reproduction by conjugation of two individuals, ahrays 

 uninucle'ited, and production of a cyst marked with an equa- 

 torial line of dehiscence, and gradually secreting one under 

 the other as many as ten concentric envelopes in the course 

 of the sporuhition. Conjugation not being known in the 

 Coccidia, it is with the niost difterentiated Gregarina^ that 

 tiiese peculiarities establish a resemblance. 



4. Sporulation up to this time single, rarely leading to the 

 formation of two spores, never utilizing in the one case as in 

 the other more than two of the six nuclei to which the two 

 ])riniitive nuclei of the cyst have given origin by dividing. 

 Formation of a residual mass, or rather of two such masses, 

 by these six nuclei and a considerable fraction of the original 

 granular contents. It is still impossible to appreciate at its 

 just value the importance of these facts ; in any case it is not 

 in the direction of the Gregarin^e that they would carry 

 Ophryocystis^ nor in that of the Coccidia. Must we say 

 that they ally it to the Myxosporidia ? 



Perhaps so, if we consider tliat two of the nuclei of each 

 spore disappear in the Myxosporidia. In them, as here, there 

 is a loss of fom- nuclei out of six ; but their disappearance 

 takes place later, and in the actual interior of the spores in 

 the constitution of which they have figured for a time. One 

 might also jierhaps think of the Infusoria, but this is a much 

 more distant and uncertain analogy. 



5. Formation in the spore of falciform corpuscles or sporo- 

 zoites identical with those of the Coccidia and Gregarina?, 

 the reverse of what takes place in the Myxosporidia. 



6. If, as I think will be evident to everybody, the Ophryo- 

 cvstidai cannot be regarded as Coccidia because of the 

 conjugation and the peculiar process of sporulation, or as 

 Gregarinw because of the presence of processes of the body 



