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Updated: July 5, 2025
Transverse section of an Amphioxus-larva, with five gill-clefts, through the middle of the body. The small particles that the Amphioxus takes in with the water infusoria, diatoms, particles of decomposed plants and animals, etc. pass from the gill-crate into the digestive part of the canal, and are used up as food.
But if there are so many thousands of mouths to feed, on the tree-like Sertulariæ as well as in all these Infusoria, where does the food come from?
They are mostly inhabitants of the water; all are destitute of joints, nerves, lungs, and proper blood-vessels; but they all possess an irritable system, in obedience to which they expand or contract at will. Among the Anthozoa are the Anemones; among the Polyzoa, are the Madrepores, or Coral-Builders, and many others. Many are microscopic, and belong to the class of animalcules called Infusoria.
The vessel which he placed near the apparatus contained on the following day Vibriones and Monads, to which were soon added larger Polygastric Infusoria, and afterwards Rotifera." pp. 32, 33. For readers who are not familiar with these subjects, it may be well to mention, that the weight of authority is decidedly against this doctrine of spontaneous generation.
In the dust collected from these various falls, there have been found altogether nineteen species of infusoria; of which eight were polythalamia, seven polygastrica, and two phytolitharia, these chiefly constituting the flint-earth portion of the dust.
When the vibrio encounters an obstacle it turns, or after assuring itself by some visual effort or other that it cannot overcome it, it retraces its steps. The colpoda undoubted infusoria behave in an exactly similar manner.
Numerous forms of such animals have been described by Ehrenberg, Dujardin, H. James Clark, and other writers on the Infusoria. Indeed, in another infusion of hay in which my Heteromita lens occurred, there were innumerable such infusorial animalcules belonging to the well-known species Colpoda cucullus.
This is mostly represented, of course, by lower organisms, as infusoria and worms.
Flamingoes in considerable numbers inhabit this lake, and breed here, throughout Patagonia, in Northern Chile, and at the Galapagos Islands, I met with these birds wherever there were lakes of brine. I saw them here wading about in search of food probably for the worms which burrow in the mud; and these latter probably feed on infusoria or confervae.
This is so marked a feature, in respect to all the primordial forms of life, that Professor Bastian gives them the more distinctive name of "ephemeromorphs," in place of infusoria. But all these primordial forms grow develop into vital activity. Not so with a solitary crystal.
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