96 SEA-SIDE STUDIES. 



direct observation did not utterly discountenance its intro- 

 duction here ; for it is quite certain that hundreds must 

 have seen, if they did not observe, what most attracted me 

 in the matter, namely, the appearance and disappearance of 

 the colour-specs in the skin of the dead animal ; and even 

 the most metaphysical of zoologists would hardly attribute 

 volition to a corpse. The observation of this one fact might 

 have led to further investigation. On placing a small strip 

 of the skin under the Microscope, I was surprised to find 

 two or three of these colour-specs expanding and contracting 

 with great vigour. At first I thought it must be an optical 

 illusion, but on close attention it became too decided for 

 doubt ; and not suspecting the truth, I concluded that some 

 animalculae were imbedded in the tissue, and that their 

 movements produced this apparent activity of the globules. 

 To settle these doubts, two other strips underwent exa- 

 mination ; in both of these, all, or almost all, the specs 

 were in activity, shooting out prolongations, and retracting 

 again — two specs sometimes seeming to run into one, but 

 really overlapping each other, and sometimes a point not 

 bigger than a millet seed expanding to the size of a sixpence, 

 growing fainter in colour as it expanded. This was decisive. 

 If the globules in a strip of skin taken from the dead animal 

 manifest precisely the same contractions and expansions 

 which they manifest on the living animal, it is clear that 

 their activity does not depend upon the " will " — a conclu- 

 sion which elementary principles of Biology ought to have 

 made self-evident a jniori* 



* DELLli CuiAJE, \i\\\i& Descriziotic e notomiadejli animal i invertebrali della 



