PRACTICAL NOTES ON 44 HETEJROGENESIS/ 
343 
tlien remained stationary until the early part of September was 
past, and then there appeared suddenly, a minute, and to me 
entirely unknown rotifer. It was one of remarkable form and 
deportment, which I at once sketched, and have reproduced at 
fig. 5. I now examined with great care, and found the monad 
but feebly present ; indeed only a very few were in the normal 
condition and shape, whilst a considerable number were slowly 
moving in the shape drawn at fig. 6. Now this was grotesque 
in the highest degree ; for the newly imported rotifer had 
decidedly a portrait of its own when seen in profile, as fig. 7 
will testify ; and the modified ' monad approximated to this 
in a simply ludicrous manner. The absurd caricature seen in 
fig. 6 was enhanced by amoeboid elongations and sharpen- 
ings of the lower part of the body, and by the protrusion of 
pseudopodal spines at a, 6, and c ; which still further pointed 
to the hypothesis that this simple creature, by virtue of the 
44 laws ” of “ heterogenesis,” was aiming at a higher sphere. 
Certainly, to a mind that could see its way to 44 heterogenesis,” 
this was a suggestive instance, and might have been fairly 
employed (on the pattern already presented) to swell the 
instances of the 64 transmutation of monads into rotifers.” 
But a further acquaintance with the monad wholly dispels this 
dream : it was merely passing honestly through a phase in its 
life-history, after the fashion of its ancestors. And as to the 
rotifer, my attention was afterwards called to the fact that Mr. 
Grosse had seen and figured it ; and in his account of it, I find a 
most instructive passage.* He names it Dinocharis Collinsii , 
and tells us that a bottle of the water in which this rotifer was 
found was taken away by a friend ; but although it was well 
searched the rotifer was not found, nor indeed was 44 anything 
of interest ” discovered. It was nevertheless retained ; and 
after having been kept for more than four months it was sud- 
denly and in an unexpected manner seen to be 44 swarming with 
these interesting creatures ” — an event extremely similar to the 
one I record ; only, in this latter case, there were no monads 
beforehand to suffer 44 transmutation.” 
Now whoever has carefully read the reputed facts for 44 hetero- 
genesis ” will be fain to admit that there are very few of them 
that offer more reasonable ground for the inference made than 
exists in this instance. Discontinuous observation, aided by 
imagination, sees the monad, then the form of a monad mid-way 
between itself and the rotifer, and finally the latter ; and, after 
its fashion, the case would be established. That this is no ex- 
aggeration of the kind of reasoning employed, we may fairly 
test by the facts presented. 
* “ Intellectual Observer/’ vol. x. pp, 270-1. * 
