Marvels of Pond-life

g the Melicerta-Use of glass-cell-Habits of Melicerta-Curious Attitudes-Leave their tubes at death-Carchesium-Epistylis

g so elegant; but they were, nevertheless, objects of great interest, and were probably specimens of the Floscularia cornuta. A swimming rotifer in a carapace somewhat fiddle-shaped, with one eye in its forehead, and a two-pronged tail sticking out behind (the Euchlanis triquetra), also served to occupy attention; but a further search among the myriophyllum revealed more treasures of the tube-dwelling kind. These were specimens of that highly curious Rotifer, the Melicerta ringens, who, not content with dwelling, like the Floscules, in a gelatinous bottle, is at once brickmaker, mason, and architect, and fabricates as pretty a tower as it is easy to conceive. The creature itself stands u

ot to produce anything like the tubes made by the caddis-worms out of grains of sand, but entirely to change the appearance of the materials employed. All large particles are rejected, and only those retained which will form a homogeneous pulp with the viscid secretion; and when the process is complete the head of the crea

ould be expected, but in a ring about the middle of the tube. "At first new additions are made to both extremities of the enlarging ring; but the jerking constrictions of the ani

ght by Mr. Gosse to be portions of a nervous system, and two calcars or feelers serve as organs of relation. The young

as before described. By occasionally changing the water one may be kept for days in the same cell, and will reward the pains by frequently exposing its flower-like head. Usually the horns or

At times the head is wagged about in all directions with considerable vehemence, playing singular antics, and distorting her lobes so as to exhibit a Punch and Judy profile. When these creatures die they leave their tubes

alks that were very flexible, and retractile by means of a muscle running down their length. The Epistylis is, as its name imports, the dweller on a pillar. The stem is stiff, or only slightly flexible, and has n

sty

looks like a tree from fairy-land, in which every leaf has a sentient life. In general structure the bells of the Epistylis and the Carchesium resemble the common Vorticella, and like them may be seen with a power of about one hundre

uadricornis, a very common entomostracan in fresh-water ponds. At this moment I have a beautiful specimen, branching like a bushy tree, and at

ed by a carapace, and having a tail terminating in a single style, hence called "Monostyle." There is perhaps no class of creatures that present so m

ine cilia, with which its movements were effected; and its companion was the Aspidisca lynceus, an oval animalcule, having a d

intervals, and a little red eye observed. These eggs are always large in proportion to the creatures th

of creatures that have already come under noti