LIFE AND DEATH. 119 



For this reason I must strongly oppose Gotte's view that 

 an encysted individual is a germ, viz. an organic mass still un- 

 organized which can only become an adult individual by means of 

 a process of development. I believe that an encysted individual is 

 one possessing a protective membrane, in structure more or less 

 simplified as an adaptation to the narrow space within the cyst, and 

 to a possible subsequent increase by division, in short one in which 

 active life is reduced to a minimum, and sometimes even completely 

 in abeyance, as happens when it is frozen. 



l(t is evident from the above considerations that encystment in 

 no way corresponds with that which every one, including myself, 

 understands by death, because during encystment one and the same 

 being is first apparently dead and then again alive ; and we merely 

 witness a condition of rest, from which active life will again 

 emerge. This would remain true even if it were proved that life is, 

 in reality, suspended for a time. But such proof is still wanting, 

 and Gotte was apparently only influenced by theoretical considera- 

 tions, when he imagined that death intervened where unprejudiced 

 observers have only recognised a condition of rest. He apparently 

 entirely overlooked the fact that it is possible to test his views ; for 

 all unicellular beings are in reality capable of dying : we can 

 kill them, for example, by boiling, and they are then really dead and 

 cannot be revived. But this state of the organism differs chemically 

 and physically from the encysted condition, although we do not 

 know all the details of the difference. The encysted animal, when 

 placed in fresh water, presently originates a living individual, but 

 the one killed by boiling only results in decomposition of the dead 

 organic matter. Hence we see that the same external conditions 

 give rise to different results in two different states of the organism. 

 It cannot be right to apply the same term to two totally different 

 states. There is only one phenomenon which can be called death, 

 although it may be produced by widely different causes. But if 

 the encysted condition is not identical with the death which we 

 can produce at will, then natural death, viz. that arising from 

 internal causes, does not exist at all among unicellular organisms. 



These facts refute Gotte's peculiar view, which depends on the 



chiefly relies. The observations which we now possess merely indicate that the 

 animal contracts to the smallest volume possible. Compare F. E. Schulze, ' Rhizo- 

 podenstudien,' I, Arch. f. mikr. Anat. Bd. 10, p. 328 ; and Karl Brandt, ' Ueber 

 Actinosphaeriuir Eichhornii,' Inaug. Diss. ; Halle, 1877. 



