STUDIES AMONGST AMCEBiE. 
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-external habits. Certain it is, that when young the Amoeba 
plays tricks and imitates some of its fellow creatures ; that when 
middle-aged it roams about ; that in its marriage two become 
one never to separate or part ; and that late on in life it be- 
comes rotund and quiet, and very unlike its old self. 
There is generally not much trouble in finding the Amoebae, for 
if they are in the water at all they are usually abundant. Their 
particular locality appears to differ according to the kind and 
age ; and if for the sake of convenience they are grouped into 
three sets or types, one will be found in the midst of the minute 
miscroscopic algae and confervae on top of the mud ; another 
will be noticed roaming over the tangled masses, and moving 
far and wide ; and the third, more protean in its changes, is 
found everywhere on the glass, in the mud, and even floating for 
a moment or two in the midst of the water. Usually I have 
found the second kind (figs. 2, 7, 5) very common when the 
water and confervae were fresh from the stream, and its activity 
is quite unlike what is usually called Amoeban ; but this very 
lively form, which rarely puts out long processes (pseudopodia), 
and the shape of which is often very sausage-like, soon becomes 
comparatively lazy, and permanently changes its shape into that 
of a disc or flat globe (fig. 8), which after leading a monotonous 
life increases in rotundity and bursts. It gives exit to a host of 
-excessively minute globules, which are so many young Amoebae. 
In my first examination of some of the Hampstead water, in 
which some confervoid growth and a small quantity of bottom 
mud occurred, I used an ordinary glass slide, with a thin glass 
cover. There were two kinds of Amoebae found within the 
field at once ; one was the active form just alluded to, and the 
other was comparatively quiet. The quiet one may as well be 
noticed first, as its construction was very definite and clearly 
seen. It was looked at within a few minutes of its being placed 
on the glass, and then it presented the appearance of a ragged 
half-circle (figs. 9, 10) of very transparent faintly granular pro- 
toplasm, in the centre of which was a correspondingly shaped 
mass of granules, refractive globules, dark spots, and one or two 
olearish spaces of circular outline. The distinction between 
the two parts was evident enough, but there was no strict line 
between them, and on using an object-glass of one-eighth inch 
focus, the clear protoplasm was seen to enter between the granules 
and other constituents of the internal part, and indeed to be 
their medium. There was some slight movement on the free 
edge of the clear part, which may be called diaphane, and a 
ragged look was produced by a slight protrusion and a sub- 
sequent rounding off ; and the internal mass (call it endosarc) 
had a motion going on within it which was peculiar. It was 
all edging away, so as to approach one angle of the diaphane ; 
