Vorticellina.'] 



INFUSOBIAL ANIMALCULES. 



543 



necessary to prove th it tlic medlar- shaped animals were a pcrmanout 

 form, produciug a race, which in themselves, or in what they produced, 

 retuiued to the form of the parent animal. 



" We have not been able to carry the de- 

 velopment of these buds or ova further than 

 P. 15, f. 67, 68, 69, and wood cut. And it is 

 remarkable that in all these the buds have pro- 

 duced, not the Httle bell-shaped animalcules, 

 like the parent animal, but other buds Uke them- 

 selves. May it not be the case, that these medlar- 

 shaped bodies are propagated at the close of the 

 yeai' ; and that, when the plant to which the 

 Zoothamnia bearing these bodies are attached, 

 die away, they remain in the mud, protected 

 by the cold of the winter, and in the spring 

 burst forth, and settle upon the new growing- 

 plants, and produce animals of the parent- form. 

 They would thus fonn an intermediate nursing 

 race answering to Steenstrup's description." 



ZooTHAMNruM niveum. — Branches short, alter- 

 nate, and almost verticillate ; bodies oblong, 

 white, clustered at the ends of the branches ; 

 some are round and attached to the trunk ; the 

 branches are filiform, the lower ones often de- 

 serted, while the upper bear clusters of club- 

 shaped Kttle bodies, rounded anteriorly. Size 

 1-2 10th. 



The genus Scyphidium, appended by Dujardin 

 to the family of the VarUcelUna, is thus cha- 

 racterized : — 



ScYPHiDiuM. — Body sessUe, cup-shaped, taper- 

 ing at the base, covered with reticulated integu- 

 ment. 



S. rv^om. — Body oblong, marked with distant oblique stri«, deep, 

 and looking like furrows. Length 1 -565th. Found in pond-water, 

 amo ngst vegetable debris. To this genus Dujardin would attach the 

 VoHicella rimjens, and V. incUnnns, of Miiller, and possibly also the 

 V- pyy^Jormis, of the same author. 



