THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 195 



enclosed mass of protoplasm; whilst by a continu- 

 ance of the process it eventually became broken up 

 into a number of small reddish balls about T^TF" in 

 diameter. After the lapse of about a week Professor 

 Haeckel noticed that a slow movement of the naked 

 protoplasm masses had commenced within the cyst. 

 He says : ' The motion consisted in no regular rota- 

 tion of the balls, but in a slow change of place 

 among them, in which they crowded in all directions 

 among each other without any fixed order. . . . 

 Some hours afterwards the motion had become livelier ; 

 and the red balls had assumed a pear-shaped form, in 

 which one end was produced into a fine point. In their 

 confused motions within the cyst they changed the 

 shape of their soft pear-shaped bodies many times, be- 

 coming sometimes drawn out into a longer, sometimes 

 into a shorter club-shaped body, and sometimes they 

 became twisted. . . . Next day I found one of 

 the cysts burst ; the empty collapsed wall lay shrivelled 

 at the bottom of the watch glass, and a great number 

 of small club- or pear-shaped red bodies moved about 

 freely in the sea-water. It now appeared that the red 

 balls were the sporules of the Protomyxa, and that they 

 danced about after issuing from the cyst like Flagellata, 

 or like the sporules of Algae.' These germs were quite 

 simple and homogeneous throughout no nucleus or 

 contractile vacuole was to be seen, no limiting mem- 

 brane, but only a yellowish-red protoplasmic substance 

 in which were imbedded a few fine granules. The 



o 2, 



