Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/660

 which burrow through the substance of the potato-plant, and appropriate to themselves the substance of their host; while, at the same time, directly or indirectly, they set up chemical changes by which even its woody frame-work becomes blackened, sodden, and withered.

In structure, however, the Peronospora is as much a mould as the common Penicillium; and just as the Penicillium multiplies by the breaking up of its hyphæ into separate rounded bodies, the spores; so, in the Peronosj5ora, certain of the hyphæ grow out into the air through the interstices of the superficial cells of the potato-plant, and develop spores. Each of these hyphæ usually gives off several branches. The ends of the branches dilate and become closed sacs, which eventually drop off as spores. The spores falling on some part of the same potato-plant, or carried by the wind to another, may at once germinate, throwing out tubular prolongations which become hyphæ, and burrow into the substance of the plant attacked. Rut more commonly, the contents of the spore divide into six or eight separate portions. The coat of the spore gives way, and each portion then emerges as an independent organism, which has the shape of a bean, rather narrower at one end than the other, convex on one side, and depressed or concave on the opposite. From the depression, two long and delicate cilia proceed, one shorter than the other, and directed forwards. Close to the origin of those cilia, in the substance of the body, is a regularly pulsating contractile vacuole. The shorter cilium vibrates actively, and effects the locomotion of the organism, while the other trails behind; the whole body rolling on its axis with its pointed end forwards.

The eminent botanist, De Bary, who was not thinking of our problem, tells us, in describing the movements of these "Zoospores," that, as they swim about, "foreign bodies are carefully avoided, and the whole movement has a deceptive likeness to the voluntary changes of place which are observed in microscopic animals."

After swarming about in this way in the moisture on the surface of a leaf or stem (which, film though it may be, is an ocean to such a fish) for half an hour, more or less, the movement of the zoospore becomes slower, and is limited to a slow turning upon its axis; without change of place. It then becomes quite quiet, the cilia disappear, it assumes a spherical form, and surrounds itself with a distinct, though delicate, membranous coat. A protuberance then grows out from one side of the sphere, and, rapidly increasing in length, assumes the character of a hypha. The latter penetrates into the substance of the potato-plant, either by entering a stomate or by boring through the wall of an epidermic cell, and ramifies, as a mycelium, in the substance of the plant, destroying the tissues with which it comes in contact. As these processes of multiplication take place very rapidly, millions of spores are soon set free from a single infested plant; and from their minuteness they are readily transported by the gentlest breeze. Since again, the zoospores set free from each spore, in virtue of their powers of locomotion, swiftly disperse themselves over the surface, it is no wonder that the infection, once started, soon spreads from field to field, and extends its ravages over a whole country.

However, it does not enter into my present plan to treat of the potato-disease, instructively as its history bears upon that of other epidemics; and I have selected the case of the Peronospora simply because it affords an example of an organism, which, in one stage of its existence, is truly a "monad," indistinguishable by any important character from our Heteromita, and extraordinarily like it in some respects. And yet this monad can be traced, step by step, through the series of metamorphoses which I have described, until it assumes the features of an organism, which is as much a plant as an oak or an elm is.

Moreover it would be possible to pursue the analogy further. Under certain circumstances, a process of conjugation takes place in the Peronospora. Two separate portions of its protoplasm become fused together, surround themselves with a thick coat, and give rise to a sort of vegetable egg called an oospore. After a period of rest, the contents of the oospore break up into a number of zoospores like those already described, each of which, after a period of activity, germinates in the ordinary way. This process obviously corresponds with the conjugation and subsequent setting free of germs in the Heteromita.

But it may be said that the Peronospora is, after all, a questionable sort of plant; that it seems to be wanting in the manufacturing power, selected as the main distinctive character of vegetable life; or at any rate, that there is no proof that it does not get its protein-matter ready made from the potato-plant.

Let us, therefore, take a case which is not open to these objections.

There are some small plants known to botanists as members of the genus Coleochæte, which, without being truly parasitic, grow upon certain water-weeds, as lichens grow upon trees. The little plant has the form of an elegant green star, the branching arms of which are divided into cells. Its greenness is due to its chlorophyll, and it undoubtedly has the manufacturing power in full degree, decomposing carbonic acid and setting free oxygen under the influence of sunlight.

But the protoplasmic contents of some of the cells of which the plant is made up occasionally divide, by a method similar to that which effects the division of the contents of the Poronosptora spore; and the severed portions are then set free as active monad-like zoospores. Each is oval and is provided at one extremity with two long active cilia. Propelled by these,