Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885
Various
Science -- Periodicals
But now the utmost power of lenses, the most delicate adjustment of light,
and the keenest powers of eyesight and attention must do the rest. Before
the end of six hours the delicate glossy sac opens gently at one place,
then there streams out a glairy fluid densely packed with semi-opaque
granules, just fairly visible when their area was increased six millions
of times, and this continued until the whole sac was empty and its entire
contents diffused. To follow with our utmost powers these exquisite specks
was an unspeakable pleasure, a group seen to roll from the sac, when
nearly empty, were fixed and never left. They soon palpably changed by
apparent swelling or growth, but were perfectly inactive; but at the end
of three hours a beaked appearance was presented. Rapid growth set in, and
at the end of another hour, how has entirely baffled us, they acquired
flagella and swam freely; in thirty-five minutes more they possessed a
nucleus and rapidly developed, until at the end of nine hours after
emission a sporule was followed to the parent condition and left in the
act of fission. In this way, with what difficulties I need not weary you,
a complete life-cycle was made out.
And now I will invite your attention to the developmental history of the
_most minute_ of the six forms we studied. In form it is a long oval, it
is without visible structure or differentiation within, and is possessed
of only a single flagellum. Its utmost length is the 1/5000 of an inch.
Its motion is continuous in a straight line, and not intensely rapid, nor
greatly varied, being wholly wanting in curves and dartings. The
copiousness of its increase was, even to our accustomed eyes, remarkable
in the extreme, but the reason was discovered with comparative ease. Its
fission was not a division into two, but into many. The first indication
of its approach in following this delicate form was the assumption rapidly
of a rounder shape. Then followed an amoeboid and uncertain form, with
an increased intensity of action which lasted a few moments, when
lassitude supervened, then perfect stillness of the body, which is now
globular in form, while the flagellum feebly lashed, and then fell upon
and fused with the substance of the sarcode. And the result is a solid,
flattened, homogeneous ball of living jelly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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