Phenomena in a Microscopic Cell. 2G3 



The question now comes " What was this cell? " Had not 

 the starch-granules invariably been reniform instead of circular, 

 I should have interred that the rotating |jruto])lasm, including 

 the nucleus, pointed out the Chara of tlie same pool as the 

 only organism from which it could have originated ] but the 

 cocked-hat or kidney-like form of the starch-granule is so far 

 opposed to this, that in no instance did I ever see the like in 

 the Characeae. 



Again, the presence of the endophyte, which so commonly 

 developes itself in the algal cell, and especially in that of the 

 Characete, while it still further assimilates this remarkable cell 

 to the latter, at once places it on the side of the algal and not 

 on the side of the fungal cell. The presence of the starcli- 

 granules and their great number, together with the rotatory 

 protoplasm, is also opposed to its being a fungal cell (whether 

 Saprolegniean or Myxogastrean), of the flexible cellulose cell 

 of Algae &c. or of the rigid woody one of timber. 



Of the absence of the green chlorophyll vesicles I take no 

 account, because I have often seen the circulation of the pro- 

 toplasm going on in the older internodes of Xitella, where the 

 green layer has been absent ; and, indeed, this is the normal 

 state of the root-cell. 



Montague, in a back number of the Ann. des Sc. Nat. (Bot. 

 3* ser, t. xviii. p. 65), states that he found little cells {hulhels) 

 in the nodes of Chara (white, from being filled with starch- 

 granules), which germinated; and the vitality of such little 

 cells I know, from actual observation, to be so extremely 

 durable that for 8-10 months I had a single li"\ang green one 

 of microscopic minuteness, which, situated in the midst of an 

 otherwise dead node of Chara (by Avhose means alone it could 

 be kept under observation) , presented at the end of this period 

 a circulatory movement of the protoplasm equally quick with 

 what it had been at the commencement. Then it should be 

 remembered that this cell retained the green layer through- 

 out, and was sufficiently large to be viewed with an inch, 

 while those above-described could only be seen with a quarter- 

 of-an-ineh compound power. Montague's " Indhels,^' too, which 

 germinated, probably merited strictly the term applied to 

 them, viz. " little " rather than " microscopic," the only term 

 which correctly designates mine. 



Here, then, I leave the record, whose publication I a long 

 time postponed in the hope of obtaining more satisfactoiy in- 

 formation about this ciuious cell, merely adding to those who 

 may consider this communication worth reading, '' Beware 

 how, without direct evidence, you set down tliis cell as be- 

 longing to the Characese, when I, who have given much study 



