Mr. H.J. Carter on the Organization of Infusoria, 123 



food, will) a large ([uaiitity of water, is taken into tlie abdomen ; 

 s-oiuetinies the globule appears to contain nothing but water. 

 When in the sarcode, it is continually undergoing circulation 

 roimd the abdominal cavity, until the whole of it.s contents are 

 digested, and resolved into a tluid, or until their nutrient parts 

 are abstracted ; the remainder then, still in a globular form, if 

 there be sufficient water left to sustain this, is cast off through 

 the anal oritice, as it arrives opposite tliis point during rotation 

 (tig. 68 b). Frequently, however, nothing but the crude ingesta 

 remain ; for as soon as the globule begins to be circulated, the 

 watery contents begin to be absorbed, — hence some particles of 

 food are almost always present, without any globule round them 

 (Hg. 5 d) \ added to which, in many instances bodies pass directly 

 into the sarcode without any globule at all (tig. 7ie). I cannot, 

 with some others, think, that there is any intestinal canal in the 

 abdominal cavity, because the digestive globules and other par- 

 ticles of food are constantly undergoing circulation round the 

 whole of its interior. In Vorticella, particles of food may occa- 

 sionally be seen to circulate throughout, and accumulate, in 

 every corner of its interior, particularly those which do not happen 

 to be enclosed in globules (tig. 74 e e). Moreover, the intimate 

 resemblance which exists between the alimentary organs of higher 

 Infusoria, viz. Nassida, Otostoma, &c., and those of the binocular 

 and so-called blind Planarice, — in the distance of the mouth from 

 the anterior extremity, the j)resence of a buccal apparatus, and 

 a simj)le sae-like stomach in the latter, lined with a layer of 

 mucous substance (sarcode '(), charged with the " spherical cells" 

 about to be described, is so great, that with such a simple gastric 

 organ in an animal so closely allied to these Infusoria as Planaria, 

 I do not see what reason we have, in descending the scale, to 

 expect a more complicated digestive apparatus; but, on the 

 contrary, one still more simple, in which there would be no 

 stomach at all ; — a condition which ap])ears to me to be counnon 

 to all the Infusoria that have come under my notice. 



In the Amoeba, for want, apparentl}^, of a channel of com- 

 munication with the exterior, the introduction of food seems to 

 take place directly through the diaphanc ; and it is only now 

 and then that the process by which the digestive globule is 

 formed can be distinctly seen. Thus, on one occasion, where 

 the particle about to be enclosed was a small Amcebu, the latter, 

 after struggling for some time, got under the former, when the 

 large AiiKL'ba raised its diaphane in a dome-shaj)cd cavity over 

 the small one, and then, closing in below, after the manner of a 

 sphincter, shut in the small Amwba, which, with a ])ortion of 

 water, immediately par>sed into the sarcode, under the form of a 



