A NEW METHOD WITH THE BRAIN. 183 



In this way, the moner attains by degrees a certain size, and 

 then stops growing and moving. It then becomes a little ball, exudes 

 from its surface a colorless, homogeneous matter which hardens, form- 

 ing a protecting envelope for the inclosed mass. Then, a very singular 

 phenomenon occurs : by an act entirely spontaneous, the inclosed mass 

 breaks up into a certain number of parts, which soon become inde- 

 pendent, constituting so many little spherical masses lying side by 

 side within the common envelope. The original moner then exists 

 no more ; it has reproduced itself by dividing itself up, without any 

 intermediary, into these new individuals, its progeny. Each young 

 moner is a determinate part of the mother-animal, and, leaving out 

 of consideration what she exuded to form the envelope, all the rest of 

 her substance is exempted from death, and is now to begin a new life, 

 which in turn will pass through the series of transformations already 

 described. The envelope will soon break up and set at liberty the 

 young moners, which, from the first, resemble the mother-animal. 



At the grade of extreme simplification of life presented to us in the 

 moner, we have organization reduced to pure sarcode, and life mani- 

 festing itself by nutrition, reproduction, and contractility, each reduced 

 to its barely essential function — nutrition reduced to mere assimilation, 

 reproduction to a spontaneous fission into a group of young (fissiparity), 

 and contractility to the slow, diffusive movements of the pseudopodes. 



Moners are mostly inhabitants of the sea. Some of them live at 

 inconsiderable depths ; but there is one, the Baihybius Hdckelii, which 

 lives at the enormous depth of 12,000 feet, and sometimes even of more 

 than 24,000 feet. There is only one fresh-water moner. 



Many naturalists rank moners among animals, classing them as 

 rhizopods. Hackel, who discovered them, regards them as the rep- 

 resentatives of an entire category of beings intermediate between 

 animals and plants, the protista, so called from protos (first), because, 

 according to this author, they are the first representative of terrestrial 

 life, from which all other forms of life are developed, on the modern 

 theories of Darwinism. — La Nature. 



•♦»♦• 



A NEW METHOD WITH THE BRAIN". 1 



By Professor FEERIER. 



ALL are agreed that it is with the brain that we feel, and think, 

 and will ; but whether there are certain parts of the brain de- 

 voted to particular manifestations, is a subject on which we have only 

 imperfect speculations or data too insufficient for the formation of a 

 scientific opinion. The general view is that the brain as a whole sub- 



1 A paper read before the Biological Section of the British Association. 



