Marvels of Pond- Life. 69 



CHAPTER VI. 



MAY. 



Floscularia cornuta — Euchlanis triquetra — Melicerta ringens — its 

 powers as brickrnaker, architect, and mason — Mode of viewing the 

 Melicerta — Use of glass-cell — Habits of Melicerta — Curious 

 Attitudes — Leave their tubes at death — Carchesium — Epistylis — 

 Their elegant tree forms — A Parasitic Epistylis like the " Old Man 

 of the Sea"— Halteria and its Leaps— Aspidisca Lynceus. 



AY, the first of summer months, and of old 

 famous for floral games, which found their 

 latest patrons in the chimney-sweeps of 



London, is a good time for the microscopist among the 

 ponds, for the increase of warmth and heat favours both 

 animal and vegetable life, and so we found as we car- 

 ried home some tops of myriophyllum, and soon dis- 

 covered a colony of tubicolor rotifers among the tiny 

 branches. They proved to be Floscules, generally 

 resembling the F. ornata, described in a previous page, 

 but having a long slender proboscis hanging like a 

 loose ringlet down one side. The cilia or hairs were 

 not so longr as in the Beautiful Floscules we had before 

 obtained, nor was their manner of opening so elegant ; 

 but they were, nevertheless, objects of great interest, 

 and were probably specimens of the Floscularia cornuta. 

 A swimming rotifer in a carapace somewhat fiddle- 



