4S Mr. H. J. Carter on Amoeba princeps 



Forming a still narrower link between the freshwater Rhizo- 

 poda and the Myxogastres, are those beings which prey upon 

 the contents of both animal and vegetable cells (viz. protoplasm, 

 fat, and starch), but most noticed because perhaps most evident 

 in the bodies of the Protozoa and in the cells of Algse. 



I showed, many years since, that a mass of rhizopodous (com- 

 monly called fungous) cells lived and grew habitually in the 

 circulating protoplasm of the cells of Characeae (in Bombay*), 

 and therefore could only have existed there by nutrition indi- 

 rectly brought to them through the plant-cell in which they 

 were living; but that the moment anything happened to de- 

 stroy the vitality of the plant-cell, then they instantly divided 

 the cell-contents among themselves, each enclosing, like an 

 Amoeba, as much as it could catch; after which, each cell or 

 individual, assuming a spherical or globular form, cncapsuled 

 itself, abstracted the nutritious part of the enclosed plant-cell- 

 contents in an inner cell, withdrew its thus enriched proto- 

 plasm from the refuse, and, again, forming a third cell, ulti- 

 mately produced in this (from a granulation of the nucleus ?) 

 a number of mono- and diplo-ciliated polymorphic cells, which, 

 some time after, issuing from the effete parent cells into the 

 water, lost their cilia, and became small reptaut amoebous 

 Rhizopods. 



Again, in Spirogyra a-assa I have described an actinophorous 

 Rhizopod which breeds, after the same manner, in the cells of 

 this confervoid Alga at Bombay f- And during the month of 

 April last (1863), I witnessed a similar development in the cells 

 of the same Alga in England ; but in this instance the product 

 was purely amoebous, that is, without actinophryan rays. For 

 these species Pringsheim has proposed the generic name of 

 " Pythimn;" but whether either of those just mentioned is 

 his P. entophytum I will not stop to discuss. Be this as it 

 may, they both put forth filamentous root-like prolongations 

 (fig. 7 b), so much like Mucor stolonifera, Corda, and the myce- 

 lium of Fungi, that they are in this respect just as nearly allied 

 to Fungi as the Myxogastres in their way ; and yet here there 

 is no doubt that the new brood is produced from nutriment 

 incepted in a crude state, like that of Amoeba. 



Lastly, Achlya is so closely allied to Pythium that it has been 

 placed by Pringsheim in the same family, while Cienkowski " has 

 confirmed the idea formerly entertained,^' that Achlya is but an 

 aquatic form of Mucor %. 



Now, about two years since, I noticed, among the dark pin- 



* Ann. Nat. Hist., vol. xvii. p. 101 (1856). 



t Ibid., vol. xix. p. 259 (1857). 



X Micrographic Dictionary, Griffith and Henfrey. 



