INFUSORIAL ANIMALCULES. 55 



Ehrenberg believes that he has proved that their stomachs 

 are filled one after another, and he has figured, more or 

 less completely, the intestines which form the communi- 

 cation between the different stomachs. 



" Many observers have already questioned these asser- 

 tions of M. Ehrenberg (see the memoir of M. Dujardin, 

 on this subject, in the 10th volume of the Annales des 

 Sciences Naturelles). For my own part, I never admitted 

 them, because, in the first place, I never could see the 

 intestines which form the communication between the 

 stomachs, and likewise because I have observed, many 

 years since, that these supposed stomachs were moving in 

 the interior of the body of many species with great 

 rapidity, in the same manner as the granules which cir- 

 culate in the joints of the chara. I have often seen 

 vorticelles with nine or ten large globules of indigo in 

 the belly, which always moved round a centre, and thus 

 shewed, in the most evident manner, that they could not 

 have a communicating canal between the stomachs, pro- 

 vided with an oral orifice and an extremity directed to 

 the mouth. 



" But it will be asked, what are these vesicles and balls 

 of the same diameter existing in the bodies of the Infu- 

 soria, and which have been taken for stomachs ? This 

 question I have continued to ask myself, till an attentive 

 and long- continued investigation has enlightened me as to 

 their origin. 



" The true Infusoria are vesicular beings, whose interior 

 are filled with a mucous substance ; the thickness of the 

 membrane forming the vesicle can easily be ascertained 

 in some of these animals ; and in many species I have 



