58 Marvels of Pond- Life. 



impossible to use a higher power than about two 

 hundred linear, but with this, and the employment of 

 carmine, nothing like a vortex was seen during a whole 

 evening, although a less power was sufficient to show 

 the ciliary whirlpools made by small specimens of 

 Epistylis and Vaginicola, which were in the small 

 vessel. The density of the integument was unfavorable 

 to viewing the action of the gizzard, but it could be 

 indistinctly perceived. The contractions and subsequent 

 expansions of the cup, formed by the upper part of the 

 creature, may be one way in which its food is drawn 

 in, but there is no doubt it can produce currents when 

 it thinks proper. Sometimes animalcules in the 

 vicinity of Floscules whirl about as if under the influ- 

 ence of such currents. Some may be seen to enter the 

 space between the lobes, swim about inside, and then 

 get out again, while every now and then one will be 

 sucked in too far for retreat. 



Above the gizzard in the Horned Floscule,* I have 

 seen an appearance as if a membrane or curtain was 

 waving to and fro, while another was kept in a fixed 



* The Horned Floscules (F. comuta) which I have found, and which 

 ored in a glass jar, were not so large as those described by Mr. Dobie, 

 as quoted in 'Pritchard's Infusoria/ Mr. Dobie's specimens were 

 X — 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. campanulata, with five flattened lobes. 

 The ' Micrographic Dictionary ' pronounces these two species " doubt- 

 fully distinct." I have three or four times met with a variety of 

 F. ornata, in which one lobe was much enlarged and flattened, but 

 they had no proboscis. In what I take for F. comuta, 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. 



