and its Reproductive Cells. 35 



diaphane oi A. princeps seizes the nutritious body, whether living 

 or dead, animal or plant, of its own kind or different, surrounds it 

 and encloses it, with a portion of water, within its substance, and 

 then apparently/ opening a way for it into the sarcode, finally 

 transfers it to this organ, where it appears, surrounded by the 

 water taken in with it, in a spherical form, undergoes digestion 

 so far as it admits, and leaves the egesta to be cast off by the 

 diaphane in much the same way (only inverted) as they were 

 incepted. 



One point here is remarkable, viz. that while any part in front 

 of the villous or posterior end may enclose a particle of food, it 

 is only, so far as my observation extends (and in this I am con- 

 firmed by Dr. Wallich*), the posterior extremity which gives 

 passage to the egesta. 



This is the grand difference between Amoeba and the plant- 

 cell, viz. the inception of crude food, and the evacuation of the 

 egesta. 



I would also add another observation here, viz. that the pre- 

 sence of the fragment of food does not necessarily involve the 

 evident presence of a digestive space round it ; for frequently 

 the particle appears to be in direct contact with the sarcode. 

 In our comparing, then, JEthalium (which always, until just 

 before fructification, does contain particles of foreign and appa- 

 rently nutritive matter) with Amoeba, it is not against the simili- 

 tude that the former should not have any digestive spaces around 

 the particles of foreign matter which it contains, as this does not 

 prove that these foreign particles are not really serving as nu- 

 triment. I have not only constantly seen microscopic fragments 

 of what appeared to me to be the nutritious parts of woody 

 structure in the general mass of JEthalium, but on pricking its 

 rhizopodous processes, and obtaining the protoplasmic contents,' 

 which immediately burst forth and assume a coagulated globular 

 shape, have found the same, when carefully transferred to the 

 field of a microscope, to contain the particles of foreign matter to 

 which I have above alluded. I, therefore, can come to no other 

 reasonable conclusion than that they were taken in by the 

 j^thalium for nutrition, as much as the fragments, of nutritious 

 matter which are incepted by Amoeba, — a point which, if satis- 

 factorily proved, entitles the Myxogastres, more than anything 

 else, to claim for themselves the name of " Mycetozoa," which, 

 as already stated, has been proposed for them by M. A. de 

 Bary. 



Observations. — Having now described the sarcode and its 

 proper contents, viz. the moleculse, granules, fat-globules, and 

 digestive spaces, we will defer the vesicula and nucleus for after- 



* Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. xi. p. 436 (1863). 



3* 



