ANIMATED TRUMPETS, HATS, AND PURSES. 67 



my bottle in the water, I held up to view, with a 

 pocket lens, thousands of active rolling dark bodies. 

 These were the Stcnlores niyri, of various shades of 

 colour, intermediate from black to blue. So nume- 

 rous were they, too, that on dipping your hand in 

 the water it would be withdrawn all covered with 

 them ; and on rubbing your fingers together they 

 would be stained as if with black ink. Viewed 

 under the microscope, these little Stentors are like 

 so many " animated hats " (one familiar form of 

 which they much resemble) tumbling and rolling 

 about in wild delight. Both they and all the race 

 of Stentors are covered all over with fine hair, or 

 cilia, which, vibrating with life, enable them to 

 perform such evolutions. 



There are some Stentors which approach to a 

 higher form of life, in that they surround the 

 lower part of their tapering bodies with a gelatinous 

 sheath or case, in which they take refuge on the 

 slightest alarm, or when the surrounding fluid gets 

 dry ; they thus manage to retain vitality for some 

 extra time. This power to secrete a mucous - 

 gelatinous covering is of essential service at a 

 certain period of their lives, when the important 



