THE BLOOD OF ANEMONES. 259 



— what produces them ? Certainly no solid organ ; neither 

 liver nor spleen can in this case interpose its agency. Then, 

 is it possible that there can inhere in albumen a mysterious 

 histomorphotic power in virtue of which it transmutes itself 

 from the liquid into the solid condition ? This were only 

 a mode of enomicing the theory of spontaneous generation." * 

 All these questions are superfluous, since the fact is imagi- 

 nary ; an albuminous corpusculated fluid does not circulate 

 in the cavity of the Actiniae ; sea-water, carrying whatever 

 accident may have brought to it, is the " nutritive fluid " 

 of these animals. 



Dr Williams has, however, published drawings of the 

 corpuscles discoverable in the fluid, and Schmarda, as I learn 

 from Victor Carus,-f- declares that such corpuscles are con- 

 stant. Can these statements be reconciled with what 

 results from the experiments of Mr Couch and myself? 

 They have the advantage of being positives against nega- 

 tives, and must, one would think, have some truth in them. 

 What is that truth ? This question, I confess, haunted me 

 till an answer suggested itself. One of my Daisies [A. 

 Bellis) brought forth a round mass of fifteen young, agglo- 

 merated together in a ball : they were in different stages of 

 development, and being perfectly transparent, admitted of 

 easy microscopic examination. In them spherical globules 

 were distinctly visible, circulating by the action of the cilia 

 lining the cavity ; and with the globules an occasional 



* Loc. cit. p. 483. 



■f- Jahreshericht uber die im Qehiete der Zootomie erschienenen Arheitcn, 

 1856, p. 25. 



