THE PAGE OF NATURE. ' 139 



motion, cannot be directly disproved, because we cannot 

 view our specimens in the dark ; but indirectly there is 

 nothing easier. If a watch-glass, charged as above, be 

 laid aside for a night, it will be found that by next 

 morning not only a considerable radiation has taken 

 place, but that multitudes of the filaments have entirely 

 escaped from the stratum, both indicating motion in- 

 dependent of light. Rapidity of growth will show itself 

 in a prolongation of the filaments, but will not account 

 for this oscillation to the right and left, and still less for 

 their travelling in the course of a few hours to the dis- 

 tance of ten times their own length from the stratum. 

 This last is a kind of motion unexampled, I believe, in 

 the vegetable kingdom." Many species, it may be re- 

 marked, possess at their extremity a tuft of very minute, 

 delicate ciliaB, which possess the power of imparting 

 motion to the filaments on which they are developed. 

 Another strange fact in the economy of these very sin- 

 gular and anomalous plants, is the extremely limited 

 term of their existence. Their cycle of life is often com- 

 pleted in three or four days. The community of in- 

 dividuals associated together in one patch or stratum 

 live for several months; but the individuals themselves 

 die off, and are succeeded by others with a rapidity truly 

 marvellous. The remains of the dead filaments form the 

 bases of the living ones, and thus they go on increasing 

 in depth and breadth until they often cover the whole 

 bed of a streamlet. This peculiarity connects them with 

 the coral-zoophytes, and supplies another link between 

 the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 



Several obscure and curious organisms have been in- 



