Monthly Microscopical"! 
Journal, Dec. 1, 1869. J 
in Organic Infusions. 
309 
more especially that of the leaf or flower, be examined under a 
microscope, it will be found to contain very numerous small spherical 
bodies, having apparently a free movement, these being the miero- 
zymas referred to by M. Bechamp, and among them bacteria also 
may sometimes be seen. Moreover, if a green leaf be moistened 
and rubbed on a glass slide, a number of these hving molecules — 
monads or bacterial germs — are found on the glass when it is 
viewed through the microscope. I have seen them come from a 
small piece of leaf-tissue in a perfect stream. The cells of the 
petal contain great numbers of these bodies, and occasionally here, 
as in the leaf-tissue, blotches which appear to consist of masses of 
them may be observed. These facts led me to examine the seeds 
of certain plants, when I was astonished to find microzymm in 
great abundance, more so than in either the petal or the leaf-tissue. 
In fact, the contents of seeds having a " fleshy " perisperm appear 
to be made up almost entirely of microzymse, with occasional 
bacteria. To see whether these were really what I suspected them 
to be, I placed some seeds in water, and after a few days the water 
was swarming with most active infusoria of different kinds, in- 
cluding that which I have described as a phase of Kol^oda cucullus. 
On examining the contents of the seeds themselves the same pheno- 
menon presented itself. In one instance the bacteria had a most 
curious appearance. A number of them were joined together end 
to end, and the united body moved actively through the fluid with 
a peculiar undulatory motion. 
In a letter in which I communicated some of these facts to 
* Scientific Opinion,' I stated that the pollen of plants seems " to 
consist literally of microzymse cells," and that I had found the 
organic germs contained in these cells to move freely. This motion 
I have repeatedly witnessed, and, on one occasion, several of the 
pollen-cells of the common dandelion burst while in the micro- 
scopic field, and their contents were discharged and moved freely 
through the fluid in the same manner as the microzymse of seeds. 
I was much struck with the resemblance between the organic 
molecules of the dandelion pollen-cells and those of the nettle, 
which I was examining on the same occasion, and I have no 
doubt that infusions of them would furnish similar results in either 
case. It is difficult to obtain the molecules of the nettle-hair 
without the tissue of the hair itself, which renders experiments 
with them less satisfactory than those with the contents of pollen- 
ceUs. The phenomena presented by the pollen when placed in 
water are most curious, and not the less so because these pheno- 
mena somewhat vary in different cases. A few days after placing 
some pollen of Scahioiis in water, I noticed a slight flufi"y appear- 
ance at the bottom of the bottle. On examining this with the 
microscope, it was found to consist of minute filaments of a fungoid 
