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Presently it came to be known, through the labors of Kolliker, Nageli, Bischoff, and various others, that there are numerous lower forms of animal life which seem to be composed of this sarcode, without any cell wall whatever. The same thing seemed to be true of certain cells of higher organisms, as the blood corpuscles.
The connexion between constancy of relative position among the parts of the sarcode, and the rise of a contrast between superficial and central parts, is perhaps best shown in the minutest and simplest Infusoria, the Monadinæ.
Then followed an amoeboid and uncertain form, with an increased intensity of action which lasted a few moments, when lassitude supervened, then perfect stillness of the body, which is now globular in form, while the flagellum feebly lashed, and then fell upon and fused with the substance of the sarcode. And the result is a solid, flattened, homogeneous ball of living jelly.
At the same moment a motion is set up which pulls the divided pairs asunder, making the interval of sarcode to grow constantly greater between them. During this time the nuclear body has commenced and continued a process of self-division; from this moment the organism grows rapidly rounder, the flagella swiftly diverge.
In the course of a few seconds there is no disconnected sarcode visible, and in five to seven minutes the organism is a union of two of the organisms, the swimming being again resumed, the flagella acting in apparent concert. This may continue for a short time, when movement begins to flag and then ceases.
As far back as 1850, Cohn wrote, apparently without any knowledge of what Payen had said before him: "The protoplasm of the botanist, and the contractile substance and sarcode of the zoologist, must be, if not identical, yet in a high degree analogous substances.
The smaller inner chambers of the shell are entirely filled with an orange-yellow granular sarcode; and the large terminal chamber usually contains only a small irregular mass, or two or three small masses run together, of the same yellow sarcode stuck against one side, the remainder of the chamber being empty.
Immediately inside the envelope comes the primordial utricle in the one case, and in the other case the layer of active sarcode. In either case the living protoplasm, placed in the position of a lining to the cuticle of the cell, is shielded from the direct action of the medium, and yet is not beyond the reach of its influences.
Now the sarcode was, as it were, kneading its own substance, and again an inner whirling motion was visible, reminding one of the rush of water round the interior of a hollow sphere on its way to a jet or fountain.
In the perfectly motionless flattened sphere, without the shimmer of premonition and with inconceivable suddenness, a white cross smites itself, as it were, through the sarcode.
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