84 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb., 



his assailant, but the Ophibolus gained the victory and undertook the 

 seemingly impossible feat of swallowing his victim. This task 

 occupied the whole night, but he actually succeeded in swallowing 

 the snake five inches longer than himself. This very hearty meal 

 distorted him beyond recognition, and he gave no signs of life except 

 by a slight twitching of the tail. After an absence of some 40 hours 

 I revisited my terrarium, and found that he had disgorged his prey 

 and resumed his proper shape. 



" Since that time the Ophibolus has taken no food, though he is 

 still strong and active ; his spots, however, which were originally of 

 ivory whiteness, have assumed a sulphur yellow hue. 



" I tried placing a looking-glass in my terrarium, and the 

 Ophibolus showed signs of excitement at the first sight of his reflection, 

 but afterwards paid no attention to it. 



" My Ophibolus getulus, ii\ inches long, after going fifty days 

 without food, except the one snake which it subsequently disgorged, 

 killed and ate a Natrix sipcdou over eight inches long, and is 

 doing- well." 



A New Plant. 



New forms of life are always interesting ; but they are specially 

 interesting when they belong to the strange debatable land that lies 

 between the lower confines of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 

 The recent issue of the Annals of Botany (vol. viii., no. 32) opens with 

 an account of a new alga-like organism given by Mr. B. M. Davis, 

 who found it in the salt marshes of the Charles River, Cambridge, 

 Massachusetts, where it covered the stems of marsh-grass and other 

 objects so thickly as to give their surface the appearance of a dark 

 green velvet. The organism is a very lowly one, and its exact 

 position is dubious. Mr. Davis, however, after a careful description 

 of its structure and life-history, gives reasons for placing it on the 

 plant side of the border, its nearest relations being some genera of the 

 family Tetrasporeae. Euglenopsis, ^as the author names his new genus, 

 from certain resemblances to Euglena, shows an extremely peculiar 

 structure and mode of growth. It consists of branching filaments 

 composed of empty cell-cavities or compartments, the ends of the 

 branches bearing green cells. The larger specimens reach about a 

 fourth of a millimetre in height. The terminal green cells contain 

 protoplasm, in which we can distinguish a nucleus, two spaces 

 containing cell-sap, and a green band or chromatophore, in which is 

 a bright red pigment-spot. The protoplasm may escape from the 

 cell-wall and become a motile organism comparable with the large 

 zoospores of many algae. Each zoospore is provided with four motile 

 filaments or cilia at the lower end, by means of which it swims. The 

 change from a stationary to a motile condition occurs during the 

 night. When specimens were kept in an aquarium, swarms of 

 zoospores collected, each morning, on the sides of the glass towards 

 the light, which, therefore, exerts a directive influence similar to that 

 observed in the case of other algal zoospores. After a time a resting 



