Morphology of Invertebrate Types (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MORPHOLOGY OF INVERTEBRATE TYPES PARAMJECIUM CAUDATUM Ehrenberg Material. Paramaecium caudatum may be obtained easily in immense quantities from hay infusions inoculated a few days before the exercise. Fixation, staining and washing may be accomplished without difficulty by the use of a centrifuge. The stained specimens are then transferred gradually into 95% alcohol, picked up with a fine pipette and squirted onto a slide covered with a thin layer of glycerine-albumen. The slide may be finished in the usual manner. Live Protozoa are found in i any aquarium prepared for the purpose some two weeks in advance. It is advisable to use mud from the bottom of various pools and to put it into separate dishes. I have obtained excellent cultures of Amceba several times from infusions of horse manure. Every student should receive a small aquarium with live Protozoa, a small flask with hay infusion containing Paramaecium, and prepared slides of Paramaecium stained in Iron HEematoxylin. Descriptive Part Paramaecium caudatum is one of the best known Protozoa and occurs all over the world in fresh water pools. It belongs to the Class Ciliata characterized by the presence of cilia which function as organs of locomotion. Compared with an Amoeba, Paramaecium is a highly differentiated creature. Yet it has none of the organs characteristic of higher animals. Itsbody consists of a single cell which has therefore to perform within itself the various functions of life, such as nutrition sensation and reproduction. Nature has assigned these functions to various parts of the cell, which may be compared with organs of multicellular animals. One must bear in mind, however, that no homology exists between cell-parts and organs, and that even the analogy is quite superficial. It is advisab...