, as a matter of fact, by patient
watching of the place at which these infinitesimal living particles were
discharged, our observers assured themselves of their growth and
development into new monads. In about four hours from their being set
free, they had attained a sixth of the length of the parent, with the
characteristic cilia, though at first they were quite motionless; and, in
four hours more, they had attained the dimensions and exhibited all the
activity of the adult. These inconceivably minute particles are therefore
the germs of the _Heteromita_; and from the dimensions of these germs it
is easily shown that the body formed by conjugation may, at a low
estimate, have given exit to thirty thousand of them; a result of a
matrimonial process whereby the contracting parties, without a metaphor,
"become one flesh," enough to make a Malthusian despair of the future of
the Universe.

I am not aware that the investigators from whom I have borrowed this
history have endeavoured to ascertain whether their monads take solid
nutriment or not; so that though they help us very much to fill up the
blanks in the history of my _Heteromita_, their observations throw no
light on the problem we are trying to solve--Is it an animal or is it a
plant?

Undoubtedly it is possible to bring forward very strong arguments in
favour of regarding _Heteromita_ as a plant.

For example, there is a Fungus, an obscure and almost microscopic mould,
termed _Peronospora infestans_. Like many other Fungi, the _Peronosporoe_
are parasitic upon other plants; and this particular _Peronospora_
happens to have attained much notoriety and political importance, in a
way not without a parallel in the career of notorious politicians,
namely, by reason of the frightful mischief it has done to mankind. For
it is this _Fungus_ which is the cause of the potato disease; and,
therefore, _Peronospora infestans_ (doubtless of exclusively Saxon
origin, though not accurately known to be so) brought about the Irish
famine. The plants afflicted with the malady are found to be infested by
a mould, consisting of fine tubular filaments, termed _hyphoe_, 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
framework becomes blackened, sodden, and withered.

In structure, however, the _Peronospora_ is as muc