A CONFUSING CASE. 147 



This matter is named chlorophyll. There is in each 

 green mass a red speck, which some biologists name 

 the " eye-spot ; " and in each of the living masses we 

 see, besides, one or two spaces which " beat " and 

 contract and expand as if they were rudimentary 

 hearts of one kind or another. 



Now, if our globe thus turns out to be simply a 

 collection of green particles, each living, each con- 

 nected to the other particles, and each possessing its 

 couple of lashes or " cilia " to aid in propelling the 

 globe through the water, the further question, " What 

 is it ? " at once arises. 

 This was the inquiry of 

 my friend, just as it was 

 the inquiry of many a 

 puzzled naturalist in 

 former days. In the 

 days of Ehrenberg, the 

 organism was named the 

 " Globe-animalcule." It 

 was regarded as an 

 animal, or rather as a 

 colony or aggregation of Fig- 31. 



animals, and as such was classified among the animal- 

 cule hosts themselves. But this was in the days when 

 the botany of the lowest plants was an unknown and 

 unformed science. 



Let us see whether Ehrenberg's epithet can be 

 justified. That the " globe-animalcule," as it once was 

 named, or Voivox, as we had better name it now, has 

 apparent claims to be regarded as an animal, may no 

 doubt be an assertion easy of proof to the unsophisti- 

 cated mind. Does not it move ? and is not move- 

 ment a feature of animal life which stands in contrast 



