Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 470, January 3, 1885
Various
Science -- Periodicals
The nature of the outflow was like that produced by the pouring of strong
spirit into water. But no power that we could employ was capable of
detecting a _granule_ in it. To our most delicate manipulation of light,
our finest optical appliances, and our most riveted attention, it was a
homogeneous fluid and nothing more. This for a while baffled and disturbed
us. It lured us off the scent. We inferred that it might possibly be a
fertilizing fluid, and that we must look in other directions for the
issue. But this was fruitless, and we were driven again to the old point,
and having once more obtained the emitted fluid, determined to fix a lens
magnifying 5,000 diameters upon a clear space over which the fluid had
rolled, and near to the exhausted sac, and ply our old trade of _watching_
with unbroken observation.
The result was a reward indeed. At first the space was clear and white,
but in the course of a hundred minutes there came suddenly into view the
minutest conceivable specks. I can only compare the coming of these to the
growth of the stars in a starless space upon the eye of an intense watcher
in a summer twilight. You knew but a few minutes since a star was not
visible there, and now there is no mistaking its pale beauty. It was so
with these inexpressibly minute sporules; they were not there a short time
since, but they grew large enough for our optical aids to reveal them, and
there they were. Such a field after one hour's watching I present to you.
And here I would remark that these delicate specks were unlike any which
we saw emerge directly from the sac as granules. In that condition they
were always semi-opaque, but here they were transparent, and a brown
yellow, the condition always sequent upon a certain measure of growth.
To follow these without the loss of an instant's vision was pleasure of
the highest kind. In an hour and ten minutes from their first discovery
they had grown to oval points. In one hour more the specks had become
beaked and long. And this pointed end was universally the end from which
the flagellum emerged. With the flagellum comes motion, and with that
abundant pabulum, and therefore rapid growth. But when motion is attained
we are compelled to abandon the mass and follow one in all its impetuous
travels in its little world; and by doing so we are enabled to follow the
developed speck into the parent condition and size, and not to leave it
until it had, like its predecessors, entered on and completed its
wonderful self-division by fission.
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