ARCHER—ON RHIZOPODA,. 245 
bright yellow to amber and red. When focussed low down it ap- 
pears red, a shade higher of an orange or amber hue, and focussed 
high it assumes the colour of a bright speck of flame. Viewed under a 
moderate power the colour evinced is reddish, the quantity of these 
bright specks giving a red character to the whole creature. There is 
generally but one of these bright dots in each, but occasionally two in 
certain of them, which present a more elongate outline, perhaps indi- 
cating self-division, as in the last form. With a certain position of the 
focus, the black dot is evident in the centre of nearly all these bright 
eye-like specks. The general sarcode mass of the body often closely 
envelopes the central cells, and at times the figure of the creature 
approaches the globular, though elevations and distortions frequently 
occur. Sometimes, however, specimens are met with, comparatively 
poor in the central cells, when the rather hyaline sarcode body mass 
can be seen; and such can undergo a multiplicity of shapes, and the 
creature presents an activity and locomotive power quite surprising, if 
one’s acquaintance with this form should be made with the globular 
inert condition. JI have several times, in watching the movements of 
a freshly-taken lively specimen, seen it actually tear itself in two, and 
each portion become rounded off, and survive as a distinct but smaller 
individual; and this for no evident reason, that is, quite spontaneously, 
and even rapidly. A triangular cleft makes its appearance at one 
margin, which becomes deeper and deeper; but this cleft is not a 
complete severance of the sarcode at each side, for it remains connected 
by numerous fine linear threads, just like the marginal pseudopodia, 
except that for the present they remain connected at both ends with 
the body mass. Presently the tear extends downwards, and the slender 
sarcode threads give way at the upper part of the cleft, some remaining 
to belong to one of the separated margins, some to the other. This 
cleft proceeds until the two portions of the original body mass remain 
connected by but a very narrow isthmus, which finally tears across. 
The adjacent parts of the margin of each of the now two distinct 
rhizopods do not as yet seem to possess the pseudopodia quite so abun- 
dantly or so long as the older external margins; but in a few moments 
no difference is observable, and we have two smaller rhizopods out of 
one, and shortly at a considerable distance from one another. 
I would parenthetically remark here, that I could not at all look 
upon such a process as this asin any way to be regarded as a repro- 
ductive one, and yet this is all that Haeckel attributes to his Prota- 
meba primitiva, and calls by that name, notwithstanding that, in his 
most interesting paper, he is not satisfied to regard a process quite so 
simple as a reproductive one in any other form.* What he describes 
for his form seems to be nothing more than an accidental fission into 
two, and cannot be regarded either in it or the present form as a re- 
* Ernst Haeckel, ‘‘ Monographie der Moneren,” in the ‘ Jenaische Zeitschrift fir Me- 
dicin und Naturwissenschaft,” Band iv., Hefti., p. 107. 
