CURIOUS FACTS IN EVOLUTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6613, 27 January 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

CURIOUS FACTS IN EVOLUTION.

A correspondent of the London Times writes ina recent issue to that journal:—"A certain spot in the grounds of the Rev. Lord Sydney Uodolphin, Osborne, Durweston, has, for I know not how many years, by tbe reverend gentleman's kindness, furnished microscopists with a peculiar kind of earth. On taking a very minute portion of this earth, and immersing it in a drop or two of pure water, two species of a moat lively animal, f Jiotij'cr ruli/aris, will be developed in about ten minutes. No matter how often you repeat the experiment, the same two forms invariably appear. The process of development can be watched under the microscope with a quarter-inch power ; for in the short space of time named, the complex organisms will be seen to swim about aud exercise, in a perfect mauner, all the functions of their existence. A curious fact in connection with the subject is that if the earth is carefully kept, the same process may be repealed, with like results, for twelve months at least, alter which these animals seem to be unable to resist further dessication. But not so a more lowly organised form which also makes its appearance in the solution, for at the cad of ten or twelve years I have obtained a good crop of minute protoplasmic creatures, amceba, belonging to the lowest class of animal life, such as those mentioned in the paragraph from the American Journal of Science, and whose reproduction is carried on as there described, by segmentation, separation of self-division—a process which has probably been going on through all time, and will, I venture to think, on ad injinitinn. Only last week, ou taking a packet of earth from a drawer, dated Durweston, 13th July, ISG9, aud placing a very small quantity in a drop of water on a microscopic slide, in a 6hort time I had an interesting display of curious protean bodies, ameuba, moving about over the field of the microscope."