78 MARVELS OF PO^D-Lit^E.■ 



every now and then one will be sucked In too 

 far for retreat. 



Above the gizzard in the Horned Flogcule,* I 

 have seen an appearance as if a membrane or 

 curtain was waving to and fro, wliile another Avas 

 kept in a fixed perpendicular position. Mr. Gosse, 

 speaking of this genus, observes "that the whole 

 of the upper p'art of the body is lined with a sen- 

 sitive, contractile, partially opaque membrane, which 

 a little below the disk recedes from the walls of 

 the body, and forms a diaphragm, with a highly 

 contractile and versatile central orifice. At some 

 distance lower down another diaphragm occurs, and 

 the ample chamber thus enclosed forms a kind of 

 crop^ or receptacle for the captured prey." 



"From the ventral side of the ample crop that 

 precedes the stomach, there springs in F. ornata a 

 perpendicular membrane or veil, partly extending 

 across the cavity. This is free, except at the 



* The Horned Floscules (F. cornuta) which 1 have found, and 

 which bred in a ^lass jar, were not so lar^e as those described 

 by Mr. Dobie, as quoted in "Pritchard's Infusoria." Mr. D.'s 

 specimens were 1-40" when extended; mine about half that size, 

 five-lobed, and with a long slender proboscis, standing in a wavy 

 line outside one lobe. Mr. Dobie also describes an F. campa- 

 nulata, witR five flattened lobes. The "Micrographic Dictionary" 

 pronounces these two species "doubtfully distinct." I have three 

 or four times met with a variety of F. ornata, in which one 

 iobe was much enlarged and flattened, but they had no probos- 

 cis. In what I take for F. cornuta, the horn or proboscis has 

 sometimes been a conspicuous object, and at others so fine and 

 transparent as to be only visible in certain lights. 



