884 Recent Literature. [ December, 
sample, spores of different sizes were found congregated in count- 
less numbers and in various orders of distribution throughout the 
surfaces of the vegetable tissues. The majority of these spores 
were excessively minute, spherical, of the average diameter of the 
1—20,000th part of an English inch, and required necessarily the 
employment of the highest powers of the compound microscope 
for the correct registration of their characteristic form and size. 
Sometimes these spores were to be observed collected in definite 
spherical heaps, but more often they were scattered in irregular- 
shaped patches, such patches being often again more or less con- 
fluent, and thus forming collections of considerable extent. A 
large number of these spores were likewise to be seen, detached 
from their original adhesions, freely floating in the water or col- 
lected in masses upon the peripheries of the small air bubbles that 
had here and there become entangled between the slide and cov- 
ering glass. In this latter instance the spores exhibited a thicker 
and more opaque bounding wall, and manifested, as in the case 
of lycopodium powder, the power of resisting for some time the 
hydrostatic or wetting action of the water: this property had 
already been suspected by Prof. Tyndall to be possessed bye these 
minute bodies, but had not previously been practically demon- 
strated. 
“The hay within from four to six hours after maceration revealed 
on examination of a small fragment, a considerable alteration in 
the character and comportment of the associated spores. Hith- 
erto these had displayed no signs of motion, a uniform stillness 
reigning throughout the entire expanse of the microscopic field. 
Now, however, among the numbers that had become detached 
from their original adhesion to the vegetable matter, the majority 
exhibited an active vibratory motion that at t first sight was 
scarcely to be distinguished from the characteristic ‘ Brownian 
movements.’ The size of these motile spores corresponded with 
that of the quiescent ones, not exceeding the 1-20,o0oth of an 
inch in diameter, and without recourse to the highest magnifying 
power and the most careful adjustment of the illumination, it was 
te inch objectives of Messrs. Powell and Lealand, it was at 
length satisfactorily determined that each individual spore or 
body was- furnished with a single, long, slender, whip-like organ 
ae um, whose active vibrations propelled the spherical body 
through the water. These minute motile corpuscles exhibited, in 
fact, at this early stage of their development a type of organiza- 
tion in ways momparable with that of the simply uniflagellate 
genus Monas. | 
-PACKARD’S Zoorocy, Seconp Epirtion.'\—In revising this text 
: ee au Schools and ee res. By A. S. PACKARD, Jr. Second edition, 
evised. New v York T Jo., 1880. I2mo, pp. 719 . 
