168 FOOTNOTES FROM 



ternally, and were taken along with the food into the 

 digestive organs, where they commenced as it were a 

 transmuted development under the influence of abnormal 

 conditions, or that they are the natural and normal form 

 of new cryptogamic plants which exist frequently in the 

 open air around us, although from their exceedingly 

 minute size they escape our observation, their primitive 

 structure enabling them to grow indiscriminately in all 

 situations, and even in the most opposite circumstances. 

 Dr. Joseph Leidy, to whom we are indebted for much 

 new and interesting information upon this obscure sub- 

 ject, found the most extensive entoparasitic flora with 

 wonderful uniformity within the intestinal canal of a 

 species of myriapod, and a species of beetle living in de- 

 caying stumps of trees. The vegetable forms he discovered 

 in this singular situation are exceedingly curious, and 

 notwithstanding their very subsidiary position as parasites, 

 display as high a degree of organization as any of the 

 larger conferva which inhabit our streams. They con- 

 sist, in almost every case, of yellowish or colourless 

 transparent tubes, varying from half a line to two or 

 three lines in length, attached to their growing- place by 

 broad disks, and proceeding in a straight or gently 

 flexuose curved line to the free extremity. They are 

 filled with exceedingly minute, faintly yellowish, oil like 

 grannies, enveloped by much larger globules, arranged like 

 a string of beads along the whole interior. Exceedingly 

 minute and obscure although these organisms are, they 

 present many beautiful instances of means adapted to the 

 end in view in their form. " They are generally fixed 

 upon the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal in 



