xviii THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



with a one-inch object-glass whilst solution was taking place, 

 these air bubbles could be seen at first within cavities, from 

 which they were afterwards liberated by a solution of their 

 walls. Occasionally, from the very centre of a crystal from 

 which bubbles of gas had been escaping, a very small and 

 almost invisible filamentary mass floated out, which was more 

 or less thickly studded with minute air bubbles. Such masses 

 were just visible with an ordinary pocket-lens, and when 

 transferred on the point of a needle to a slip of glass, and 

 examined with a magnifying power of about 600 diameters, 

 they were found to contain more or less of the following 

 constituents: i. A minute fragment of cotton or paper 

 fibre; 2. A variable quantity of an almost transparent, in- 

 soluble plate-like substance, homogeneous, though broken 

 up in all directions by intersecting cracks ; 3. More rarely, 

 a small quantity of a tenacious mucoid matter containing 

 refractive protein-looking granules of various sizes; 4. A 

 quantity of a colourless, confervoid-looking mass, some of 

 whose smaller filaments, -7-0-4-0-0-" in diameter, looked like a 

 mere linear aggregation of irregular masses of protoplasm, 

 though it became obvious that in certain larger filaments, 

 continuous with these, the irregular protoplasm masses were 



' Fig-/ 



Spores and Filaments similar to those found within Crystals of 

 Ammonic Tartrate. ( x 600.) 



contained within a delicate hyaline cylinder, across which 

 dissepiments were sometimes to be seen, as in very minute 



