122 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



originally separate coming into contact accident- 

 ally, unite or fuse together into a single individual. 

 The blunt projections of its body-mass, by means of 

 which it is continually varying in form, contrast notably 

 with the fine thread-like prolongations, occasionally 

 interlacing, which are thrown out from Max Schultze's 

 nearly allied Amoeba porrecta. These latter projections, 

 or pseudopodite, as they have been termed, closely resemble 

 those met with in the shelled-amcebse or Foraminifera l . 

 But even in 1857 an organism was procured from 

 great depths in the Atlantic Ocean by Captain 

 Dayman, which ought, apparently, to be placed in 

 this same group Monera. This and other products of 

 Captain Dayman's expedition were examined by Pro- 

 fessor Huxley, and since the publication of HaeckeFs 

 Memoir, he has proposed to look upon this organism 

 as a c Moner,' placing it in a new genus Bathyfaus. 

 Recent expeditions and fresh investigations have tended 



1 Speaking of this animal, the Amoeba porrecta, Max Schultze says : 

 ' It sends out from its colourless body, on all sides, numerous fibrous 

 processes, short and broad on their first extrusion, but which gradually 

 elongate until they exceed the diameter of the body eight or ten times, 

 and taper to such fine extremities that a magnifying power of 400 dia- 

 meters is needed to distinguish them. The figure ,and extension of the 

 body change every moment, according to the side in which the ramifica- 

 tions are extended. If two or more of the filiform processes touch, 

 a coalescence takes place, and broader plates or net -like interlacements 

 are produced, which, in the continual changes of figure, are either taken 

 up again into the general mass, or otherwise are further increased by 

 a fresh influx of matter, until finally the entire body is transposed to 

 their place.' 



