46 Mr. H. J. Carter on Amoeba princeps 



place so quickly, and is followed by such rapid, bounding 

 movements of the now ciliated young Acineta, that who would 

 venture to say, a priori, that a dull, heavy, sluggish Amoeba 

 could catch such an agile little thing ? But the Amcebce are as 

 unerring and unrelaxing in their grasp as they are unrelenting 

 in their cruel inceptions of the living and the dead, when they 

 serve them for nutrition ; and thus the Amoeba, placing itself 

 round the ovarian aperture of the Acineta, received the young 

 one, nurse-like, in its fatal lap, incepted it, descended from the 

 parent, and crept off. Being unable to conceive at the time that 

 this was such an act of atrocity on the part of the Amoeba as 

 the sequel disclosed, and thinking that the young Acineta might 

 yet escape, or pass into some other form in the body of its host, 

 I watched the Amoeba for some time afterwards, until the tale 

 ended by the young Acineta becoming divided into two parts, 

 and thus in their respective digestive spaces ultimately becoming 

 broken down and digested (fig. 8, &c.). 



A little liberty has been taken in the verbal description of this 

 act to lessen the tediousness of the account ; but the facts remain 

 the same, and evince an amount of instinct and determination 

 of purpose which could hardly have been anticipated in a being 

 so low in the scale of organic development as Amoeba. 



Observations. — On comparing the assumed reproductive cells 

 of Amoeba princeps with those of j^thalium, there is the differ- 

 ence that, while in the former they are confined to a few, all of 

 the same size, in the latter they are innumerable and of all 

 kinds of sizes. In the former, again, each cell probably pro- 

 duces but one Amoeba (although it is true that the granulated 

 protoplasm may produce as many as there are granules in each 

 reproductive cell), while in the latter there is a rapid endogenous 

 development of nuclei and nucleated cells within cells. In adult 

 Amoeba the reproductive cells are comparatively few and distinct, 

 while in ^thalium they form a confused mass, as regards num- 

 ber, size, and contents, which is hurrying on, fungus-like, to 

 the production of an infinitude of sporidia. The apparent ab- 

 sence of a nucleus in the reproductive cells of A. princeps 

 (while it is present in all those of jS^thalium) probably arose 

 from my not having been able to detect it. I can hardly con- 

 ceive that these cells can be without a nucleus. 



Ultimately, the semifluid mass of AEthalium gathers itself up 

 together like that of A. princeps-, its membranes become effete, 

 and, the endogenous cell-development having gone on to its full 

 extent, the parent cells are congregated and dried up together, 

 while their reproductive granules, on passing into the state of 

 sporidia, secrete a hard capsule around themselves respect- 

 ively, which ultimately becomes of a dark brown colour. 



