THALLOGENS. 237 
Here we are permitted to behold a very astonishing phenomenon. 
Are these young beings really plant#? The German botanists call 
them Zoospores. They identify them with animals, 
remarking that animals only have organs of loco- 
motion, and that the vibratile cilia which are ob- 
served in the spores of the Vaucheria are true organs 
of motion. Thus, according to certain German 
naturalists, at the commencement of their lives 
these Fuci are true animals, which only become f 
plants when they are fixed and begin to germinate. 
Apart from this theory of transformation, 
Unger’s remarks upon the clubbed Vaucheria, V. 
Clavata, are highly interesting. While examining 
this plant he found that the vesicular summits had 
the power of contraction, and that by this process 
they expelled the contained sporules,which, after expulsion, ascended 
to the surface of the water. H ppening to look at the surface of this 
water, he was surprised to find it covered with small globules of un- 
equal size, swimming freely here and there, and gliding round glo- 
bulesthatremained motionless, st PI i g d g in setti gth | 
it motion, like animated beings. The next day a great number of 
these globules aggregated round the bubbles of gas disengaged 
from the Conferve, and floated at the surface,—some dark green, 
others round or elongated, others transparent, humid, diverging at 
Tight angles with each other, all evidently plants in a state of ger- 
Mination. Other globules were oval, dark at one extremity, and 
almost ‘Transparent at the other, which swam freely about, and 
ene the Space of an hour he succeeded in tracing not only the 
diminution of vitality and the death of these infusoria, but the subse- 
{ent development of the dead animals into germinating plants. 
Pg French botanists are more cautious in expressing their 
"Ws; they dare not pronounce upon the animality of these 
the nt and the researches of M. Decaisne prove beyond a doubt 
Pe aaa nature of the so-called zoospores, a doctrine to which 
= aia eminent English philologists had long given their 
a For ourselves, we confine ourselves to this brief expla- 
of both opinions, 
en the spore has become fixed, it develops itself regularly ; 
Fig. 308. Young 
Vaucheria. 
