262 Royal Asiatic Society. 



quently seen to issue from the cysts with portions of the brown 

 chlorophyll in their interior, which, as they are not only monociliated 

 but polymorphic from the commencement, they may be assumed to 

 have enclosed after they had become developed from the purified 

 protoplasm. 



The fact of portions of the protoplasm enclosing the chlorophyll 

 for the starch it might contain, had been seen by the author most 

 satisfactorily, in some spores of Spirogyra, which were in the ano- 

 malous state of being pregnant with grains of starch without chloro- 

 phyll, while their contents were undergoing the transformations above 

 described. Here there was no colonring matter to impede the view, 

 and the author had repeatedly seen the disappearance of the starch- 

 grains directly followed by the appearance of oil-globules ; the dividing 

 up of the protoplasm into portions each containing oil-globules, and a 

 gradual lessening in quantity of the oil, indicative of its having 

 become assimilated ; while the transparency of the spore generally, 

 enabled the observer to see, that the whole of these transformations 

 were effected, not by any foreign organism, but by the protoplasm 

 alone. 



It was true that the transformation of the protoplasm of the cell 

 of Spirogyra and its movements above detailed, were unlike the phee- 

 nomena of vegetable life, but the formation of the spore itself in the 

 normal way, and the movements of the protoplasm of the conjugating 

 cells just preceding it, merely required to be studied to bring about 

 the conviction, that one was but a modification of the other. 



In the normal way, the protoplasm of both conjugating cells after 

 having become pregnant with starch, (for nutriment during their 

 uterine life as it might be termed,) combined, two cysts formed around 

 this mass, the starch passed into oil, and finally the filament was 

 reproduced without the presence of either, — living as before by endos- 

 mosis. In the abnormal way, the chlorophyll died, two cysts were 

 formed around the portions of protoplasm respectively, the starch 

 passed into oil, the refuse of the chlorophyll was thrown off from the 

 enclosed protoplasm in the manner of a Rhizopod, the protoplasm 

 divided up into Monads which came forth as animals, that is, in the 

 form of Rhizopods endowed with the power of locomotion and poly- 

 morpliism, and thus under a form which does not live by endos- 

 mosis, but by the enclosure of crude material from which the nutri- 

 ment is abstracted by a digestive process, and the refuse finally dis- 

 charged. 



Lastly, the author stated, that whenever a mass of filaments of 

 Spirogyra underwent these transformations, the latter were invariably 

 followed by a numerous development of Actinophrys Sol of all sizes, 

 to the exclusion at first of almost all other animalcules ; and coupling 

 this with the undistinguishable form from Actinophrys Sol assumed 

 by the Monads developed by these transformations, he saAV no other 

 more reasonable conclusion to come to, than that they were one and 

 the same, and therefore that one source at least of Actinophrys Sol 

 was the protoplasm of Spirogyra. 



Mr. Carter added that these phcciiomena were easily witnessed. 



I 



