VAMPYRELLA LATERITIA. 101 
phrys-like Ameba. In other instances it forms a dense 
spore, the product of which is not known. 
Encistment usually takes place after the taking of 
food. Penard (J. c.) observed this in examples which 
he studied. After it has emptied [several Spirogyra 
cells, V. Jateritia, he says, loses its brick-red colour, 
which is at the utmost visible here and there in spots 
in the greenish mass with which the body is stuffed. 
“Later on it will divide within its cist into several 
embryos, which will pierce a hole, and issue, one after 
the other, already clothed in their fine red colour.” 
We have not ourselves witnessed the phenomenon 
exactly as described, but in an example from Dunham 
the occurrence was noted of the emission of an ame- 
boid spore. This took place when the animal was still 
attached to a conferva filament, after gorging itself 
with the cell-contents. The “spore” presented itself 
as a particle of greyish protoplasm, finely granular, 
and furnished with a contractile vacuole, and a small 
sphericle corpuscle which may have represented a 
nucleus. Its movements were comparatively rapid. 
The pseudopodia were at first acuminate, straight, and 
sharply pointed (Pl. X, fig. 5), but ultimately, after 
complete severance from the parent body, they became 
digitate and blunt. The ultimate development of this 
young Vampyrella was not traced, but it retained the 
amoeboid form during the short time that it was under 
observation (Pl. X, figs. 6, 7). 
V. lateritia is sometimes found presenting characters 
varying from those described, and which make it diffi- 
cult of identification. Biitschli, in Bronn’s ‘ Thier- 
Reichs,’ represents its form as elongated and slug-like 
(Pl. XI, fig. 3), without the capitate rays, and destitute 
also of elongated pseudopodal filaments, but furnished, 
in place of these, with a profusion of short, radiating, 
tapering, and sometimes branching filaments, which 
clothe the entire body-surface. An Essex example 
(Pl. XI, fig. 1) represents the animal in this condition, 
but with a spherical body which is clearly the normal 
