HYDRO IDS AND JELLY-FISHES. 35 



that enters in at the mouth of one, feeds all the rest. 

 Beside the little flower-like animals on the upper 

 branches in No. 23, some of the lower branches 

 terminate in bunches of small oval bodies resembling 

 eggs ; and such, indeed, they are. 



There is one very odd thing about these little ani- 

 mals : the young that are born from them are quite 

 different from themselves. You know that usually the 

 young of animals are like the parents. From the eggs 

 in our hens' nests, chickens are hatched ; from the 

 pretty blue eggs in the robin's nest, come forth the lit- 

 tle robins : and I- think you must remember the funny 

 little turtles that came out of the turtles' eggs, which 

 we kept in a box of earth two summers since, to see 

 what would become of them. We should naturally 

 suppose, then, that from these little animals which I 

 have been describing, there would be born animals like 

 themselves ; just as chickens are born from hens' eggs, 

 robins from robins' eggs, and tortoises from tortoises' 

 eggs. But we shall see that this is not so. 



We will suppose that we have car- 

 ried home one of these little clusters 

 of animals, differing somewhat from 

 the preceding, and put it in our Aqua 

 num. Here you have its picture (No. 

 24) .* A day or two after, we may find 

 swimming about in the water a little, 

 fairy-like, transparent thing, so slight 

 and delicate, indeed, that it seems 

 almost as if some drops of the water had taken form 

 and shape ; and as if this strange little being that is 



* No. 24 : Corytu. 



