THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 75 



tens Amoeba receives its very name from the 

 great variety of forms which it assumes. 1 It is 

 always changing its outline, and to such a 

 degree, that not only are no two ever found 

 alike, but the same specimen does not retain 

 the same shape for two successive minutes. 2 

 And so we have the most extraordinary alterna- 

 tions of forms in the same animalcule, Hydra, 

 Strobila, Medusa, where the parent for the time 

 does not produce its own likeness, but something 

 wholly diverse, " each individual being alto- 

 gether unlike its mother, or its daughter, but 

 exactly resembling its grandmother or its grand- 

 daughter." 



The school of naturalists who draw conclu- 

 sions in favour of their law of development, 

 from the circumstance of a microscopical ani- 

 malcule passing into another form, or appa- 

 rently giving origin to a totally different crea- 

 ture, should carefully ponder the following 

 words of a keen-eyed microscopic observer : 

 " There is a very strong analogical probability, 

 that many even of the most dissimilar forms of 

 these animalcules will prove to be different 



1 Carpenter, p. 464. 2 Gosse's Life, p. 22. 



