196 THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



swarming movements of the germs were precisely simi- 

 lar to those of the sporules of the Myxomycetas 1 . The 

 movement is progressive, accompanied by a rotatory 

 or lash-like action of the cilium, which consists merely 

 of a prolongation of the body-substance of the germ. 

 The swarming time of the Protomyxa spores seems to 

 last at least one day. On the day following that of 

 their exit from the cyst. Professor Haeckel mostly 

 found them lying quiet at the bottom of the watch 

 glass. And then, he says, c the tail of the spore was 

 drawn in, and the pear-shaped form of the body was 

 exchanged for that of an irregular roundish disc, whose 

 star-shaped circumference was drawn out into several 

 processes. The reddish-yellow plasma bodies now com- 

 pletely resembled in outline the spores of Myxomycette 

 when they had come to rest ; or likewise Amoeba radiosa 

 of Ehrenberg. . . . Most of the processes were simple, 

 but, at this stage, the largest already began to divide' 

 themselves dichotomously, or repeatedly to ramify them- 

 selves. The protrusion and retraction of the ever- 

 changing processes was accomplished throughout in 

 the same manner as in the lively moving species of 

 Amoeba/ These separate amoeboid creatures now began 

 to take food for themselves ; they rapidly increased 

 in size, and then also began to throw out more numerous 

 and complex processes from their circumference. Then, 

 too, they first developed large refractive particles in their 



1 These however, even at a similar early stage, are provided with 

 a contractile vacuole. 



