Marvels of Pond-Life. 1 1 



airy situation, the general clearness of their water, and 

 the abundance of vegetation with which they were 

 adorned. Near the margin confervas abounded, their 

 tangled masses of hair-like filaments often matted 

 together, almost with the closeness of a felted texture. 

 At intervals, minute bubbles of air, with occasionally a 

 few of greater size, indicated that the complex processes 

 of vegetable life were actively going on, that the tiny 

 plants were decomposing carbonic acid, dexterously 

 combining the carbon — which we are most familiar 

 with in the black opaque form of charcoal — to form 

 the substance of their delicate translucent tissues, and 

 sending forth the oxygen as their contribution to the 

 purification of the adjacent water, and the renovation 

 of our atmospheric air. This was a good sign, for 

 healthy vegetation is favorable to many of the most 

 interesting forms of infusorial life. Accordingly the 

 end of a walking-stick was inserted among the green 

 threads, and a skein of them drawn up, dank, dripping, 

 and clinging together in a pasty-looking mass. To 

 hold up a morsel of this mass, and tell some one not in 

 the secrets of pond-lore that its dripping threads were 

 objects of beauty, surpassing human productions, in 

 brilliant colour and elegant form, would provoke 

 laughter, and suggest the notion that you were poking 

 fun at them, when you poked out your stick with the 

 slimy treasure at its end. But let us put the green 

 stuff into a bottle, with some water from its native 

 haunt, cork it up tight, and carry it away for quiet 

 examination under the microscope at home. 



Here we are with the apparatus ready. "We have 



