286 SELECTED NOTES. 



ture a half-inch objective should be used. In the Monthly Micro- 

 scopical Journal for Nov. and Dec, 1877, there is an excellent 

 paper by Judge Benwell " On the Building Apparatus of Melicerta 

 ringens" from which I extract the following : — " The building 

 apparatus of M. ringens consists of a combination of very various 

 parts, in which combination the pellet organ is but one item. It 

 is requisite that the pellet should be specific in shape when made, 

 and in situation and in altitude when laid ; the materials have to 

 be specifically selected ; their safe arrival at the pellet organ speci- 

 fically insured, and all in the presence of very considerable 

 opposing risks. To understand how these results are arrived at is 

 one of the exquisite enjoyments of microscopic research." 



After a very able exposition of the mechanism of the brick- 

 making and building operations, which all who can should read. 

 Judge Benwell says : — 



" I may be unduly prejudiced in favour of my subject, but the 

 apparatus of M. ringe?is always fills me with wonder and delight. 

 It stands, in my judgment, so completely and instructively/^^ se, 

 it is so complicated, yet so accurate in its performance, the appa- 

 rent intelligence of this ' speck of life ' is so extraordinary, the 

 results are so unexpected, so many points, too, of the animal's 

 economy have to be considered in estimating the final result ; and 

 although it is true that we have, even from Sientor upwards, a 

 series of rough building going on, which result in more or less 

 workmanlike habitations, yet the leap from the very best of them 

 (Limnias) up to M. ringens is to my mind a vast, a great stride, 

 and just as great as the step from a lath-and-plaster cottage up to 

 a house built of patent stone, made by the aggregation of sifted 

 sand forced together in a mould and deposited by the action of 

 highly complicated machinery. To start from Li?nnias and reach 

 by development an animal which, in the size of the tenth of an 

 inch, shall make a thousand separate bricks, each brick shaped 

 like a rifle-bullet, convert a sphere into a complicated figure, turn 

 the brick round, lay it in its right place and altitude, make 

 another, lay that next it, throw away its waste material, choose its 

 material, keep up five, nay six, separate and distinct currents, all 

 necessary to its object, never let them get confused, though there 

 is not the one-hundredth part of an inch between either of them , 



