Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/476

452 the life-history of six of these organisms. These life-cycles cannot be here recounted. Suffice it now to say that each of them multiplied enormously by self-division (fission), but that the life-cycle in each case began and ended in a distinct genetic product—call them what we choose—spores, germs, or ova.



I have drawn from Nature, in the six respective cases, the condition presented by each organism at the time of emitting its spores. Fig. 1 is the genetic product of an oval monad, with a pair of flagella; it rapidly increased by fission; then in a remarkable manner a pair blended, became one in the form of a sac, the sac burst and poured out, as the drawing portrays, innumerable spores, which were watched continuously until they were seen to develop into the parent condition. Fig. 2 gives a similar product of another form,



anatomically and in all the details of metamorphosis, but yet passing through the states of fission, blending into a sac, and (as seen) the emission of spores; which were again watched into the parent