NEAR AMBERLEY. 19 



beautiful and full of interest, while there is no need to go out of 

 our way to find them. Whilst examining the exquisite spore-urns 

 of our mosses I have often thought what pretty models they would 

 make for jars, jugs, and pitchers. Then the contrasts and har- 

 monies of colour shown by lichens and their fructifications are 

 enough to delight any artist's eye. 



I have a few words to say about pond life. There is nothing 

 in the wide range of microscopic research that seems to me so full 

 of interest. Here we see the marvellous workings of life ; and 

 surely none but the most stolid and unreflecting mind could study 

 them without awe ; for while we can understand more or less of 

 the results, the cause is hidden in mystery. Each discovery 

 which leads us to some elementary law or principle only shows us 

 how much lies behind it. There is a wonderful charm in all 

 efforts to trace beginnings in nature, especially where we can see 

 in the simple structures and faculties of the lower forms of life a 

 foreshadowing of their completion in the frame and mind of man. 

 For a long time all the microscopic inhabitants of water were 

 called Animalculse, and until the recent improvements in the instru- 

 ments used for observation, little was known about them. Much 

 has been done of late years by means of the microscope to 

 classify the teeming myriads of our ponds, but very much yet 

 remains to be done. Among some of the most marvellous of 

 these creatures are rotifers. About two hundred species have 

 been discovered and named, but hardly a month passes without 

 some fresh form being noticed, while the male of the commonest 

 species ( R. vulgaris) has not yet been identified. What a good 

 opening here awaits all who care to make drawings of what they 

 find by means of the camera-lucida. In a pond at Bowbridge, to 

 which I was kindly directed by Mr. Mayo, I found fine specimens 

 of the tube-building rotifer, Melicerta ri?tgens. This marvellous 

 creature builds for itself a home in the shape of a tube, out of clay 

 contained in the water. It has a small cup-like process in which 

 it moulds the clay into compact rounded pellets. These it places 

 one by one, as they are made, round the edge of its tube. By 

 putting a little carmine paint into the water, I have seen them 

 very plainly, for the Melicerta devours the carmine greedily, and 

 also uses it for building. I have timed them at work, and find 



