226 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
morning sun. Facts which appeared to he anomalous are now 
arranged in their proper places. The action of the proto- 
plasm, independent of an investing cell-wall, can be studied 
in a thousand forms, and every such study is replete with 
interest. But in its progress this enquiry has developed a 
cognate one, and demonstrated that in many of the varied 
forms assumed by objects once thought to be distinct from each 
other, we have but so many manifestations of vital phenomena 
in individual species. Hence, rapid as has been the increase in 
the number of recorded specific forms of plants and animals 
since the publication of Ehrenberg’s great work, it is question- 
able whether that increase has not been more than neutralised 
by the synthetic process by which it has been counterbalanced. 
This synthetic aggregation of forms has been especially 
remarkable in the case of the Volvocince . That Volvox 
globator , aureus and stellatus , are but modified forms of 
the first-named species, is now an almost universally recog- 
nised truth. More difference of opinion, however, exists in 
reference to the curious little organism named by Ehrenberg 
Sphcerosira Volvox . Towards the middle of April in the 
present year the Volvox globator appeared in marvellous 
abundance in a pond near my present abode, and amongst 
the common forms were myriads of Volvox aureus , and a con- 
siderable number of the Sphcerosira . About the 10th of May 
some cold, wet weather arrived, and the whole stock dis- 
appeared from the pond; whilst of those which I was pre- 
serving at home no trace now (May 7th) exists, save vast 
numbers of the spores of Volvox aureus , which remain quiescent 
at the bottom of the glass jar in which they were contained. 
I availed myself of the opportunity thus afforded me of sub- 
jecting the Sphcerosira to a rigid examination. The specimens 
were about the same size as the ordinary Volvox, but were more 
egg-shaped and rather longer in one direction than in the 
opposite one. This peculiarity, however, I found to be shared 
by many of the specimens of the common type of Volvox found 
in the same pool, though in a less marked degree. As is 
characteristic of the form under consideration, the separate 
masses of protoplasm scattered over the sphere varied in size ; 
most of those at one end of the organism (fig. 1, a) being 
small, and the greater number of them uniform in size, being 
altogether undistinguishable from those of the associated Volvox. 
It has been affirmed, by Ehrenberg, that a distinction exists 
between the Sphcerosira and the Volvox globator. He says 
that in the former each protoplasm is supplied with one 
cilium, whilst in the latter there are two. But I am con- 
vinced that this is not the case. True, I only found one cilium 
attached to each gemmule of Sphcerosira, but I also found this 
