ABSTltACTThe fine structure of the ciliate Steutor has been studied by means of the electron microscope and the results have been correlated with observations made on the living organism by means of light microscopy; special reference has been made to structural features which may be responsible for contraction and extension in Stentor.Descriptions have been given of the structure of the macronncleus, the vacuolated cytoplasm, mitochondria and the pellicle; a detailed study has also been made of the adoral membranelles. About 250 membranelles encircle the peristomal cap and each is composed of 3 rows of cilia, with 20 to 25 cilia in each row; a fibrillar root system connected with the membranelles depends into the endoplasm for about 20 # and each is essentially in the shape of a fan, the terminal ends of each root bifurcating to connect to neighbouring roots. The membranelles thus form a cohesive unit and this morphological arrangement may have a bearing on the motion and coordination of the whole system. Two structural features extending throughout the length of the animal have been identified per cortical stripe in the body wall of Stentor; first, km fibres lying just beneath the pellicle are composed of stacks of fibrillar sheets and are identical with the birefringent fibres observed in the living animal. The individual fibrils of the sheets are in turn connected to the kinetosomes of the body cilia; thus the km fibres are homologous to kinetodesmata. Secondly, NI bands lie beneath the km fibres and form an interconnected system in contact with the surrounding vacuolated cytoplasm; the thickness of the M bands is greatest at the base of a contracted animal. The contractile and extensile properties of these organelles have been discussed in the light of experimental results and theoretical considerations.

Seventeen non-motile strains of Chlamydomonas reinhardii isolated by Dr Lewin and thirty-six newly isolated strains have been examined in the electron microscope for structural abnormalities of the flagella. Fourteen of them have straight, paralysed flagella in which the central fibres are replaced by an irregular core of disorganized material. The fourteen mutations map at four unlinked loci. Some of them are leaky; light and electron microscope observations on leakiness are described. In the former case leakiness is measured by the proportion of motile cells, and in the latter by the proportion of intact centre fibres seen in transverse sections. The degree of leakiness is to some extent characteristic of particular loci.A partial suppressor of some of these mutations has been isolated which acts on all the mutant alleles at two loci and to a much lesser extent on four out of five alleles at a third locus.

Brillouin spectra of biological systems may ultimately be related to their intrinsic molecular properties. In some instances the optical properties may be associated with the elastic ones and ultimately with the force constants of the molecules involved. In the present work we have used a triple-pass Fabry-Perot interferometer to measure Brillouin light scattering spectra for refractive tissues of the eye, including cornea, capsule and lens. Combined with corresponding measurements of density, estimates of the real and imaginary parts M' and M'' of the longitudinal bulk modulus have been made for the first time. Measurements have extended over four classes of vertebrate: Mammalia, Aves, Pisces and Amphibia; only small differences have been found between the various samples of cornea, whereas marked differences occur between the different lenses. Hence this account concentrates largely on the latter. The implications of this work lie not so much at the ophthalmological level as at the macromolecular and offer, in conjunction with other scattering techniques, opportunities for probing the lens and its proteins topographically as a function of growth.