128 
reactions as the encysted Protomyxa. The membrane was 
similarly structureless, but tougher, thicker, and more con- 
sistent. My hopes of being able to follow the further deve 
lopment of the encysted Myxastrum, as well as of the Pro- 
tomyxa, now seemed not unlikely to be fulfilled. To observe 
this I daily inspected the encapsuled plasma-balls, which I 
kept carefully isolated in small watch-glasses in the damp 
room. At length, after a fortnight of fruitless expectation, 
a change was visible. The homogeneous plasma-ball began 
to show a great number of radiating stripes, and to divide 
itself into the direction of these stripes, as in the yelk-furrows 
of Sagitta. After three or four days the entire plasma-ball 
was divided into about fifty thickened conical portions, whose 
points met in the centre of the ball, while the rounded bases 
of the slender cones touched the inside of the wall of the 
cyst (fig. 14) . Between the isolated, conical, radiating plasma- 
portions, whose substance evidently thickened slowly, a small 
quantity of a clear watery fluid collected. A change of 
form now slowly commenced in the radiating plasma-portions, 
whereby their original globular shape became more and 
more spindle shaped. At the same time the inner points of 
the spindles (which were pointed at both ends) withdrew 
from the centre, in which fluid collected (figs. 15, 16). 
Each of the extended spindle-shaped plasma-bodies, which 
had originated from the radial separation of the simple 
plasma-body, now began singly to be clothed with a thin 
covering, which was visible as a distinct double outline 
between the single spindles (figs. 15, 16). The length of 
the spindle-shaped bodies measured only '003 mm. ; their 
greatest breadth (in the middle) ‘0015 mm.; the thickness 
of their outer covering '00012 mm. This membrane con- 
sisted, as it appeared from the chemical reactions, of silix. 
Isolated, one would have taken each single spindle for 
a small diatom, something like a Navicula (fig. 17). But 
the nucleus which the Diatomaceae possess was wanting 
in the entirely structureless plasma-body. Each spindle was, 
in fact, a simple cytode, not a true (nucleus-containing) 
cell. 
In this condition, protected by the firm siliceous case, and 
externally still by the common cyst-case of the older body, 
the spindle-shaped germs of the Myxastrum remain, pro- 
bably under their natural conditions, for some time. After 
the lapse of a whole week no remarkable change was visible 
in them, and, as the time of my stay at Lanzarote drew to- 
wards its close, I determined to burst the only two cysts 
which were still left, and to see if the further development 
