160 NATUKAL HISTOllY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



limits, were apparently quite free from each other, and with the alter- 

 nating movements of the lobate extensions became rolled onward, I 

 might almost say, just as so much shot (of somewhat differing sizes) in 

 a caoutchouc bag might be, supposing it endowed with a like innate 

 automatic mobility. I could find no trace of a nucleus, nor of a con- 

 tractile vesicle, as in a true Amoeba ; however, if such really existed, I 

 fancy the extreme density and abundance of the opaque green granular 

 contents would have prevented their being noticed ; and I may add, there 

 was not a single instance of any foreign organic body to be seen in tbeir 

 substance. But, to borrow the terms made use of for a true Amoeba, 

 the " endosarc" and " ectosarc" (so to speak) were abundantly well 

 differentiated. The latter, I apprehend, more correctly regarded as ac- 

 tually the so-called "primordial utricle," was hyaline, presenting a 

 border of nearly equal width all round, and at all parts of the external 

 margin, except at the attenuated extremity, was very clearly and sharply 

 defined ; at the narrow mostly bluntly pointed extremity, as I have al- 

 ready said, the margin presented a somewhat granular appearance, or at 

 least not a smoothly defined outline. Beyond the limits of the inner 

 boundary of the hyaline border, the contained green granules did not 

 infringe, no matter how energetic or changeable the movements of the 

 pseudopodal processes (Figs. 4, 5, 6). 



The changes described did not take place by any means simulta- 

 neously in all the eight primordial cells of any Stephanosphaera-globe ; 

 but while one, perhaps, might have attained the complete amoeboid state, 

 another might be still in the simple condition of a rounded uncoated 

 cell, without as yet any apparent intention to undergo the wonderful 

 change described, whilst several of the others might exhibit various 

 intervening phases between both conditions (Fig. 3). During the 

 changes of the primordial cells described, the old common hyaline enve- 

 lope-cell of the Stephanosphaera became collapsed, and burst, or it may 

 be more or less dissolved, and from its trammels the now reptant amoe- 

 boid primordial cells, by means of what were decidedly their own 

 automatic movements, by degrees mostly all succeeded in becoming one 

 by one wholly emancipated. 



A pseudopod was projected from the broader rounded anterior ex- 

 tremity of one of the so greatly modified primordial cells, not slowly, not 

 as it were hesitatingly, but with great vigour and considerable rapidity. 

 The hyaline lobose expansions were generally extended to about a 

 quarter or a third of the whole length of the total amoeboid body ; and 

 no sooner had one begun to be projected than a rapid flow of the gra- 

 nules at once took place into it, but still not infringing on the hyaline 

 border. This was scarcely accomplished, when another similar lobose 

 expansion was projected from the opposite side of the frontal or anterior 

 margin, and thus, by drawing into it a similar influx of the granular 

 contents, rapidly obliterating the former. One, two, or three (rarely 

 more) of these lobose expansions, were mostly evident at a time, but, of 

 course, in various degrees of expansion and retraction, an influx of the 



