68 MARVELS OF POND-LIFE. 



thirty linear was advantageously brought to bear 

 upon them. When elongated their bodies were 

 somewhat pear-shaped, but more slender, and 

 variegated with vacuoles and particles of food. 

 The mouths resembled those of Yorticellse, and 

 put forth circles of vibrating cilia. They were 

 easily alarmed, when the cilia were retracted, and 

 down they sank to the bottom of their vases, 

 quickly to rise again. In one bottle there were 

 two living in friendly juxtaposition. This was not 

 a case of matrimonial felicity, nor of Siamese 

 twins, but of fisnin^ or reproduction by division. 

 The original inhabitant of the tube finding himself 

 too fat, or impelled by causes we do not under- 

 stand, quietly divided himself in two, and as the 

 house was big enough, no enlargement was required. 

 How many stout puffy gentlemen must envy this 

 process; how convenient to have two tliin lively 

 specimens of humanity made out of one too obese 

 for locomotion, ^[an is, however, sometimes the 

 victim of his superior organization, and no process 

 of "fission" can make the lusty lean. 



The bottles in v.hich these creatures live, in 

 happy ignorance that they are called by so crack- 

 jaw a name as CothuDiia imhev'his^ were described 

 as Carapaces by Ehrenberg, but they bear no re- 

 semblance to the shell of a turtle or a crab. They 

 are thrown off by the animals who preserve no 



