
200 THE NORTHERN MICROSCOPIST. 


muscular protoplasm into Trichine? Perhaps some might ; this 
has been done ; but the microscope has come to our aid, and made 
us masters of the cycle of its life. But again it must be asked, if 
something equivalent to this happened amongst the medley of 
minute and lowly organisms that accumulate in a live box, or a 
trough, with decaying animal or vegetable matter, would not the 
heterogenetic bias be ready to infer “ transmutation ?” 
Even more remarkable still are the curious parasitic fungi Which 
attack and kill the larvee and pupze of insects. In the compara- 
tively common case of Hepialus virescens, the caterpillar buries 
itself in the earth, and instead of becoming an imago, is absolutely 
converted into a vegetable—a fungus. ‘The interior of the larva 
is wholly occupied with a white fibrous mycelium, and up through 
the very soil in which it is buried grows a tall fungoid filament, 
literally rooted in the larva itself. Zorrubia Robertsit, TZ: militarts, 
T. spherocephala, T: entomorrhiza, and others, are well-known 
varieties of this fungus. This is decidedly a better case for infer- 
ring the “transmutation ” direct of animal protoplasm into vege- 
table form, than many of the reputed cases in the Beginnings of 
Life, and others presented in this and other of our local scientific 
societies, of the transformation of Euglenze into Rotifers, or chlo- 
rophyll corpuscles into Paramecia! But to patient effort it has 
been shown that these fungi have a definite biological cycle; that 
they arise in diffusable spores ; and, within the terms of the known 
laws of Evolution, follow each generation the path of its predecessor 
as accurately as a sodium flame will give the same results to-day to 
the prisms and lenses of a spectroscope as it did under the same 
circumstances yesterday. 
But from all this it will be seen that the danger in the case of the 
young and uninstructed student of pond life or putrefactive forms, 
is want of thoroughness, or hasty inference. 
In the year 1870, I actually watched a Parameecian hatch or 
come Out of what appeared toall intents and purposes an encysted 
Vorticellan! The Vorticellan was the beautiful form known as 
Convallaria. The Paramecian was Amphileptus anser. ‘This 
seemed an actual case of Heterogenesis. I paused, was silent, 
worked and waited. It was not until 1872 that a repetition of the 
phenomena occurred ; then it was rich in instruction. 
A group of the V. convallaria was seen, as at a, a, a, Plate IIL, 
Fig. 10. Swimming in the trough were several Amphileptd, as in 
Fig. 10 6, Suddenly an Amphileptus sprang upon and seized the 
crown of a Vorticellan, as at 1 a, Plate iii, Fig. 11. This little 
organism was powerless to shake it off, in spite of darting up and 
down, swaying to and fro, and the rapid lashing of its circle of 
cilia. Gradually it became less active, and a sort of fusion was 
manifest, as in 11 @, which was more and more marked passing 

