INTRODUCTION. / 



" for," says Midler, " they seize hold of them while 

 swimming, by their feet, and daintily suck the life's blood 

 out of their captives with their sharp beaks."* " The 

 Hydrsef also, and not a few aquatic larvae, lay snares for 

 them, and many VorticeUse frequently grievously . infest 

 them, for they not only adhere, often in heaps, to the mem- 

 bers projecting beyond the shell, but also, nestling them- 

 selves within the shell, they overspread the whole body 

 with their own colonies, not a little retarding the motion 

 and agility of their host."! ^ ne larva of the Corethra 

 jjhiHiiconiis, known to microscopical observers as the 

 skeleton larva, is exceedingly rapacious, more especially of 

 the Daplmise. They seize their prey with the rapacity of 

 a pike, grasping it with its two strong jaws, and gorging 

 them alive. Pritchard says they are the choice food of a 

 species of Nais, which he calls the Lu-rco, and which de- 

 vours them in great numbers. || The CKydorus spliericus 

 is their especial favorite, and I have repeatedly verified 

 Pritchard' s observations, having counted at least ten in- 

 dividuals swallowed alive, and lodged in the different 

 stomachs of this eiutton. Those in the first and second 



O 



stomachs were still alive, while those contained in the iu- 



* Eutomost. p. 8. 



f "It would appear that there is something eminently poisonous to 

 animals in the fresh-water Hydrse. ' I have sometimes/ says Baker, ' forced 

 a worm from a polype the instant it has been bitten (at the expense of 

 breaking off the polype's arms), and have always observed it die very soon 

 afterwards, without one single instance of recovery.' To the Entomostraca, 

 however, its touch is not equally fatal , for I have repeatedly seen Cyprides 

 :u id Daphuise, entangled in the teutacula and arrested for some considerable 

 time, escape even from the very lips of the mouth and swim about after- 

 wards unharmed their shell evidently protecting them from the poisonous 

 excretion." Johnston, Brit. Zooph., 2d edit.,, p. 131. 



J Loc. cit., p. 8. They are frequently covered completely with a small polype, 

 called by M. Reamur '" Polypes a bouquet ;" for an account of which see 

 Trembley's ' Memoire sur les Polypes a bouquet, a la suite des decouvertes 

 de Need'ham,' Leyde, 1747 ; also De Geer, ' Hist, des Ins.,' vii, 437, where 

 he informs us that in April 1742 he first observed this fact, and made a re- 

 port upon it to the Academy of Sweden, which that learned body inserted 

 in the Memoirs of the Academy in 1/47, previously to Mr. Trembley's work 

 being published. 



Brightwell, Zool. .Tourn., v, 396 ; and t, xi.x, f. 1. 



I) Microscop. Cabinet, p. 81. 



