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spicules ; they are very slender, filiform, hyaline, occasionally 
showing minute granules, and are in length rather more 
than twice that of the longer set of spines. It is, however, 
so far as my experience of this form goes, rare to find this 
creature with the pseudopodia extended ; possibly, however, 
the specimens may require to be some time at rest upon the 
slide to induce them to project their pseudopodia, or it may 
require some happy combination of circumstances, as regards 
the illumination, to bring to view objects of so great tenuity 
and often of considerable transparency. The sarcode body 
is almost always more or less densely loaded with chloro- 
phyll-corpuscles, sometimes amylaceous-looking granules, 
besides those colourless granules always noticeable in the 
Rhizopoda. I cannot say that I have been able to perceive a 
nucleus, the existence of which is queried by Carter, neither 
have I seen contractile vesicles, and I imagine the temporary, 
somewhat conical projections of the ‘ lorica,’ adverted to 
by Carter, may be due rather to mechanical disturbances of the 
globular form than to the action from within of any such 
pulsating movement. 
In connection with the Acanthocystis turfacea, I have 
noticed a somewhat remarkable circumstance, which is, per- 
haps, sufficiently curious to warrant description. What I 
allude to is its becoming, in some unexplained way, the nidus 
for the development of the ova of a minute unascertained 
rotatorian, and I have noticed this circumstance sufficiently 
often to show that it can hardly be considered as exceptional 
or unusual. One sees an Acanthocystis with a portion of the 
green body-matter still normal and healthy, and the rest of the 
space occupied by one or two colourless ova, or considerably 
more frequently one sees three such ova, and then the whole 
or nearly the wffiole of the body-matter of the Acanthocystis 
vanished. At first glance this might be thought to look 
like a developmental state of the rhizopod itself. But on 
watching one showing this condition, before many hours one 
may see the beginning of life in one of the ova before the 
rest ; with amazement one watches, and presently there 
shapes itself out, not a young rhizopod, but a little rotato- 
rian (not unlike a Monolabis). By degrees tbe young animal 
assumes more and more of a definite figure, and, like all 
young rotatoria just ready to leave the egg, seemingly very 
impatient of confinement. By repeated knocking and shoving 
headforemost against the w r all of the ovum, it ultimately 
succeeds in bursting the shell, and so it reaches to the cavity 
of the Acanthocystis. But it is still in prison there. Its 
narrow bounds, although soon, perhaps, likely to have the 
