A ROTIFERON IN VAUCHERIA. 265 



of these " hornlets" — indeed their tendency, even under such 

 altered conditions, to retain their normal purpose, or rather to 

 follow out their accustomed form, is manifested by the papilli- 

 form protuberances, sometimes a little produced and thinned at 

 the extremity, which often occur about their summits, and which 

 indicate the points of egress or ingress, as the case may be, of the 

 antherozoids or resting-spores, which, in the regular course of 

 growth, would have been found in their interior and properly 

 provided for. 



The presence of the rotiferon is by no means incompatible 

 with the continuance, for some time, of the uniform layer of 

 lively endochrome, which clothes both the healthy part of the 

 filaments, and the more or less urceolate cysts. Eventually, 

 however, on the deposition of the ova, or perhaps rather the 

 death of the animal, this becomes decomposed ; the ova in such 

 dead cysts being sometimes, from the transparency of their 

 cellulose walls, easily examined. I have counted from eight to 

 ten of these in a cyst. The development of the Rotifer from 

 these I have not followed. 



The usual length of these abnormal appendages was, I think, 

 about l-50th of an inch, more or less. 



I have added an outline of a " hornlet," exhibiting an unusual 

 departure from the ordinary structure, observed by me, in the 

 formation of a curious blind sacculus (a. Fig. 11) in the cavity 

 of the filament almost immediately beneath it. — Kew, 5, xii., 

 1859. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE XIV. 



Figs. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, & 9. ..represent the urceolate cysts of the Vaucherla, mostly 



containing a rotifer, and with the endochrome layer 

 but slighrly disturbed. 



„ 3 represents a case, in which, from the appearance of an 



aperture, the animal would seem to have escaped. 



„ 2 & 10 C3'Sts, containing ova, with decomposed endochrome. 



„ 7 one of the ordinary "hornlets" of the Vaucherla. 



„ 11 the same, with singular structure in the filament bear- 

 ing it. 



