AMCEBA PRINCEPS: 



PART III. 



it without a mouth, digesting it without a stomach, 

 appropriating its nutritious material without absorbent 

 vessels or a circulating system, moving from place to 

 place without muscles, feeling (if it has any power to do 

 so) without nerves, multiplying itself without eggs, and 

 not only this, but in many instances forming shelly 

 coverings of a symmetry and complexity not surpassed 

 by those of any testaceous animal.' 



Such is the description given by Dr. Carpenter of the 

 Amoeba and its allies. The Amoeba princeps, which 



Fig. 86. Amoeba princeps. 



is the type of the naked group, fig. 86, is merely a 

 shapeless mass of semi-fluid sarcode, coated by a soft, 

 pellucid and highly contractile film, called diaphane by 

 Mr. W. J. Carter, and in many forms of Amoeba the 

 whole is inclosed in a transparent covering. It is in 

 the interior semi-fluid sarcode alone, that the coloured 

 and granular particles are diffused, on which the hue 

 and opacity of the body depend, for the ectosarc or 

 external coat is transparent as glass. These creatures, 

 which vary in size from the g- sVo ^ ^ ne Vo f an mcn i n 

 diameter, are found in the sea, but chiefly in ponds 



