NATURAL HISTORY OF NUNBURNHOLME. 179 



or numerous spherical granules or zoospores, moving restlessly about, and 

 frequently striking against the walls of the cell, as if anxious to escape 

 from confinement. This point gained after a while, they speedily begin 

 to move hither and thither, now wheeling round and round, now oscillating 

 from side to side, and now, as if from sheer fatigue, remaining quiescent. 

 "Truly wonderful," says Hassall, in his "Fresh-water Algae," " "is the 

 velocity with which these microscopic objects progress, their relative speed 

 far surpassing that of the swiftest racehorse. After a time, however, which 

 extends to some two or three hours, the motion becomes much retarded, 

 and at length, after faint struggles, entirely ceases, and the Zoospores 

 then lie as though dead: not so, nevertheless; they have merely lost the 

 power of locomotion; the vital principle is still active within them, and 

 they are seen to expand, to become partitioned, and if the species be of 

 an attached kind, each Zoospore will emit from its transparent extremity 

 two or more radicles, whereby it becomes finally and for ever fixed. 

 Strange transition from the roving life of the animal to the fixed exis- 

 tence of the plant." Of these Fresh- water Algae, we find here specimens 

 of Chara, Conferva, Zygnema, probably many species of each. Not useless 

 either are these minute plants, affording as they do food to so many 

 myriads of the tiny inhabitants, and acting as purifiers to the waters in 

 which they dwell, decomposing and removing all that is noxious, and 

 restoring to the water oxygen, which is essential to all animal life. 



We should never tire of the subject, for from the source to the 

 Lal-lal, where the stream 



"Adown the steep, with headlong leap 

 Plunges with roar and plashing." 



And from thence to where intermingled with the Barwon it pours its 

 waters into the ocean, there is matter enough, and we leave, even for a 

 while with regret, the glittering Dragon- Flies fluttering over the wild 

 plants, or darting away with the rapidity of a hawk, and feel indeed that 

 Nature has not spread in vain her beauties over the world. 



Geelong, Victoria. 



NATURAL HISTORY OF NUNBURXHOLME. 



BY THE REV. F. 0. MORRIS. 

 ( Continued from page 80.) 



Number four. or, to speak more exactly — I "love to be par- 

 ticular," like the Vicar of Wakefield — west south-west, stands a fine Yew 

 tree, in one of the branches of which, but at the side farthest from the 



* Introduction, p. 11. 



