92 



r. iJiMA. 



The oil like corpuscles are small yellowish, highly refractive spherules of by 

 no means uniform size They are probably nutiitive matter in reserve and 

 identical with similar bodies that are so commonly met with in the body of other 

 Amœbie. Some individuals conlained only a small number of these corpuscles, 

 others in fair abundance. Also cases were not wanting in which not a trace of 

 them was to be found. 



Crystals and extrinsic matter, such as food-particles, etc., were not met with 

 in the sarcode. Nor was the animal ever seen in the act of taking in food, which 

 process, in my opinion, could only take place by means of the villiform pseudo- 

 podia at the knob. Whether the latter, like the similar organ of Pehmyra, 

 served at times for prehension, I have not been able to ascertain. 



The above is the description of Amoeba miurai in what I consider its normal 

 living state. Now besides such individuals, the serous fluid also contained a large 

 quantity of peculiar cells, which were unmistakably nothing else than dead, at 

 any rate much changed, bodies of the same animal. These are usually globular 

 or more or less irregular in slr.pc and of about the same size as normal individuals 

 or larger on account of their swollen state. They are found either isolated or 

 clinging together in variable numbers and forming conglomerate-like clusters (figs. 

 8 & !)). Sometimes such clusters are as large as to present a dimension of almost 

 half a millimeter. The cells are characterized by having one or several large 

 vacuoles that press the scanty protoplasm and the nucleus between them or against 

 the peripheral wall. T hey ofien present the form of thin-walled strongly distend- 

 ed vesicles. The protoplasm contains the same oil-like corpuscles as the normal 

 specimens ; the nuclei, made visible after treatment with acetic acid, are 

 likewise exactly the same. The villous knob and with it the pseudopodia have 

 disappeared, having no trace whatever. A similar swelling was observed by 

 Greeff in Avi. fluida when left in certain liquids, the enveloping membrane then 

 showing a gap at the position where the villous knob has disappeared. Such a 

 gap was not visible in my objects, what was probably largely due to the thinness 

 of the membrane. The cells have not the slightest power of active motion and 

 1 think no one, who sees them, will hesitate to consider them as dead and as 

 being prevented from speedy bursting and collapse only by the presence of an 

 enveloping membrane. The existence of transitional stages between the normally 



