Monthly Microscopicall 
Journal, June 1, 1869. J 
On Free-swimming Amoehse, 
353 
maining unretracted. A large reddish granular nucleus is notice- 
able in every specimen. Group B gives faithful representations 
of some of the forms assumed in passing from the free-swim- 
ming into the reptant stage. Amoeba villosa abounded in this 
water, to the exclusion almost of every other known species. 
Mr. Carter, in the 'Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist.,' describes 
and figures (vol. xiii., p. 21, plate 2, 1864), from a single specimen 
taken in a tank at Bombay, under the name of Amoeba monociliata 
a species possessing a flagellum, a posterior villous patch, and 
reptant locomotion only. Neither of the two Amoeba forms under 
notice can therefore be identified as Mr. Carter's Amoeba mono- 
ciliata. They must be regarded as either new and distinct species, 
or, and I strongly incline to the opinion, as phases of Amoeba life. 
At present we have no other certain knowledge of Amoeba propa- 
gation and reproduction than that by fission. An over-extended 
pseudopodum, perhaps larger than common, remains attached to 
the spot, to which it has been projected, separates from, the parent 
mass, and creeps ofi" as an independent living creature. That this 
summary and somewhat rude process may, under favourable con- 
ditions, go on with extreme rapidity, as we see it does in the more 
highly developed forms of ciliated Infusoria, I am neither prepared 
to admit or deny. Let this be as it may, it could only account for 
the presence of a vast number of individuals within a limited space, 
not for their dispersion through a wide area. Is it, therefore, more 
unreasonable, or opposed to analogy, to infer that the low-vitalized 
and slow-creeping Amoeba should propagate its race and secure its 
general distribution by locomotive gemmules possessing but a single 
and feeble flagellum, than that the fixed and scarcely more orga- 
nized sponge should gain the same end by means of its ciliated 
and more active gemmules ? That we may not irrationally look 
for some such mode of reproduction as the result of conjugation, I 
am fully persuaded. That conjugation does take place is yet, 
however, open to doubt and disputation ; but I can scarcely question 
that those unusually large Amoebse we so frequently meet with in 
the autumn months, are actually the incorporation of two indi- 
viduals in a copulative act ; and such view is further strengthened 
by what we so constantly witness among those shelled Amoebae — the 
Bijfflugiw. 
There is yet another view which may be taken as to the phase 
of hfe — if such it be — which these free-swimming Amoehse present. 
They may be the adult form — the perfected animal. We have seen 
that after slowly labouring for a time through the water, they 
settle down, throw out pseudopoda, by-and-by withdrawing them, 
reassume the rounded form, and again struggle onwards. It is 
possible (though nothing has been observed in confirmation) that a 
pseudopodum detached while in its reptant stage, becomes an inde- 
