Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885
Various
Science -- Periodicals
To properly study this in its further changes, a power of from three to
four thousand diameters must be used, and with this I know of few things
in the whole range of minute beauty more beautiful than the effect of what
is seen. In the perfectly motionless flattened sphere, without the shimmer
of premonition and with inconceivable suddenness, a white cross smites
itself, as it were, through the sarcode. Then another with equal
suddenness at right angles, and while with admiration and amazement one
for the first time is realizing the shining radii, an invisible energy
seizes the tiny speck, and fixing its center, twists its entire
circumference, and endows it with a turbined aspect. From that moment
intense interior activity became manifest. Now the sarcode was, as it
were, kneading its own substance, and again an inner whirling motion was
visible, reminding one of the rush of water round the interior of a hollow
sphere on its way to a jet or fountain. Deep fissures or indentations
showed themselves all over the sphere; and then at the end of ten or more
minutes all interior action ceased, and the sphere had segmented into a
coiled mass. There was no trace of an investing membrane; the constituent
parts were related to each other simply as the two separating parts of an
ordinary fission; and they now commenced a quick, writhing motion like a
knot of eels, and then, in the course of from seven to thirty minutes,
separated, and fully endowed with flagella swam freely away, minute but
perfect forms, which by the rapid absorption of pabulum attained speedily
to the parent size.
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