Abstract
(From a German Correspondent)
CIENKOWSKY, who several years ago made some exceedingly interesting communications on the low organisms known as Monads (Archiv fur Microscopische Anatomie, i. 1865), has recently contributed more additional information regarding them and allied organisms (ibid., xii. 1875). To the lowest order of plants belong the Myxomycetes, which, in the complete state, form protoplasmic nets, named plasmodia. Cienkovvsky found such plasmodia in fresh water, which fed themselves by suction of algæ on passage into the resting state, they fell asunder into several cysts, and (what is deserving of special attention), by the release of small portions from their mass, produced amœba, i.e., self-supporting individuals, which creep about by means of pseudopodia, and which have hitherto been regarded as independent animal organisms. As this phenomenon has also been observed in other plasmodia (Brefeld), it is not improbable that very many amoeba do not represent independent forms, but belong to the development cycle of other and plant-like forms. Ciliophrys infusionum, an organism which stands very near the animals named Actinophrys, is transformed while under the covering glass, into a swarmer (swarmspore), and when several individuals are connected, or one enters on the process of division, there arise as many swarmers as there were parts. Through this formation of swarmers there appears Heliozoa, which group belongs to the Actinophrys, closely related to Monads, or those lowest organisms which have been claimed both by zoologists and botanists as objects belonging to them. Among the Monads, Cienkowsky observes various en-cystments, divisions, and colony formations; but the most remarkable of such processes is that in Diplophrys stercorea, an extremely small cell-like organism with a yellow spot, and pseudopodia at two opposite ends of the body. These little bodies, observed in moist horse-dung, multiply by division, and form by union of pseudopodia, long strings in which separate individuals can glide to and fro. In several of the organisms he examined, Cienkowsky was able to observe the taking up of solid food by suction of algæ. Thus the boundary lines, which it has so long been usual to draw between plant and animal organisms, and between the individual groups of those lowest forms of life, appear more and more illusory, and the supposition is recommended, of a common lowest kingdom of organisms, that of Protista (Haeckel), out of which animals and plants have by degrees been differentiated.
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Science in Germany . Nature 14, 298 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014298a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014298a0