226 MISCELLANEOUS EXAMPLES 



view is negatived by the fact that none are ever to be seen making 

 their way through the thick walls of the Nitella cells ; though, 

 looking to their large minimum size, to their prodigious numbers, 

 and to the fact that they are never seen to divide, thousands of 

 them ought to be capable of being seen boring their way through 

 the walls of the cells, had they come from without. Further, these 

 embryo organisms are always completely motionless, and yet first show 

 themselves intimately intermixed among the chlorophyll corpuscles. 



It comes therefore to this : myriads of chlorophyll corpuscles at 

 first exist, and then become replaced by myriads of motionless 

 specimens of Actinophrys, first showing themselves as bodies of 

 about the same size as the chlorophyll corpuscles — a trifle larger 

 but never smaller. How do the chlorophyll corpuscles vanish ? 

 And whence come the specimens of Actinophrys ? These 

 are the two related problems ; and the only answer is, that 

 the myriads of chlorophyll corpuscles are converted into the 

 myriads of Actinophrys — ^just as, under other conditions, and in 

 young Nitella cells whose chlorophyll corpuscles contain no 

 starch grains, they may be simultaneously converted into minute 

 Amoebae, such as I have already described, and represented in 



Fig- 37- 



The mode in which the transformation of the chlorophyll cor- 

 puscles into the Actinophrys is brought about seems to be this. 

 The corpuscle appears slightly to enlarge, and, at the same time, 

 begins to decolourise, leading to the production of colourless 

 mixed with fine green granules. The starch grains also begin to be 

 digested. We have here the first stage of the motionless 

 Actinophrys ; spherical and, as yet, showing no rays. No entire 

 chlorophyll corpuscles are ever to be seen within these specimens 

 of Actinophrys — only, at first, a few green granules.' These 

 granules soon disappear as the organisms slightly increase in size ; 

 and where they are not too densely packed they may be seen to 

 emit 6-8 pseudopodia, whose length about equals the diameter of 

 the Actinophrys. Some of the chlorophyll corpuscles, failing to 

 undergo this transformation, become disintegrated and liberate 

 their starch grains, and such scanty food is devoured by those of 

 the new organisms which come into contact therewith. The 

 paucity of food, however, in comparison with the myriads of 



' It cannot be, therefore, that the chlorophyll corpuscles are swallowed by the 

 Actinophrys. The latter is of the same size as the chlorophyll corpuscle when, 

 in its rudimentary form, it first shows itself among them. 



