Hicks, on Volvooc Globator. 
101 
at an early period, before the young Volvox is fully grown, 
at the time when the future zoospores first appear, enclosed 
in cells, the final product of segmentation. These zoospore- 
containing cells, by contact with their neighbours, are rendered 
multangular, and they include about twenty or thirty hexa- 
gonal, young zoospores, in close contact, and which are of 
many colours, as shown at PI. VI, fig. 12, a, b. When these cells 
are detached, they become round, and, (to quote my notes at 
the time, " They have a curious power of changing shape, 
like an infusorial Proteus, protruding the wall, first at one 
side, and then at another, into which protrusions the contents 
run^^ (fig. 12 c). The other and more striking instance, 
however, was visible in the zoospores themselves at an 
advanced age, when some of them enlarge and become irre- 
gular in outline (Fig. 13 a). Some disappear. Some break 
up and disperse within the Volvox (sperm-cells ?) . Some 
undergo a process of subdivision (germ-cells ?), producing a 
group of from two to forty green drops, arranged so that their 
apices, with cilia, point externally ; while others enlarge to two 
or three times their natural size, having many nuclei within, 
and variously coloured. When this cell, probably by the 
solution of the outer mucilaginous coat, becomes free, it also 
possesses the power of moving precisely as does a true Amoeba. 
Unfortunately, I did not extend my observations so far as to 
see if in its progress it included foreign matter, — a point of 
much interest ; the conditions, however, above described were 
so distinct, that there was no possibility of mistake by confu- 
sion with other structures, as I watched these aged zoospores 
move away in many instances from their original position, 
while it underwent the transition. 
To conclude, with Dr. De Bary, that the Myxogastres are 
animals, because in some phase of their existence they possess 
a self- moving endoplast, seems in our present knowledge to 
be premature ; for then must we include the above-mentioned 
genera, not excepting Volvooo and its congeners in the animal 
kingdom, — a step for which botanists are not as yet prepared. 
A much better explanation seems to me to be this : that the pro- 
toplasmic contents, when deprived of their confining envelope 
of cellulose, possess, in common with Sarcode, under certain 
circumstances, a power of spontaneous motion in the manner 
of an Amoeba. It is questionable how far such actions in the 
Rhizopodan class are the result of any true consciousness, 
or whether it is not an involuntary action — a property which 
can scarcely be denied to vegetables composed only of endo- 
or protoplast; and this would seem to be strengthened by the 
fact I have observed, viz., that before protrusion, in the Amoeba 
