FLUSTRA AND ESCHARZ. 317 
longitudinal rows, each of which contains about twenty-eight 
cells in that space; this gives 5,720 cells per square inch on each 
surface. Now a moderate-sized polyzoary contains an area of 
three square inches, i.e. six on both surfaces, which will give the 
high number of 40,320 cells on such a specimen. Many, how- 
ever, are much larger.” 
Before the stormy tide detached them from the bottom of the 
sea, and left them to perish on the shore, each of the cells con- 
tained a living creature whose mouth was surrounded by a 
coronet of filiform and ciliated tentacles, destined to produce 
a vortex in the water, and thus to provide the tiny owner with 
its food. The body was bent on itself somewhat like the letter 
V, the one branch (a) being the mouth and throat, the other (b): 
the rectum, opening by an anus, and the middle part (c) the 
stomach. Each of these tiny members of the 
flustra colony possessed a considerable number 
of muscles; each was furnished with a movable 
lip or lid to block up the entrance of his 
cell when he courted retirement; each had 
his individual nerves, and consequently his 
individual sensations, though feeling and 
moving simultaneously with his fellow citizens 
by the agency of a system of nerves common 
to the whole republic, and sending forth a 
delicate filament to the inmate cf each cell. 
Such are the wonders which but for the 
= l ae > ] med Flustra in its cel. 
microscope wou or ever have remained (iighly magnified.) 
unknown to man. 
The Escharze greatly resemble the Flustre, for here also the 
cells are disposed side by side upon the same plane, so as to 
form a broad leaf-like polyzoary, which, however, is not of a 
horny or coriaceous texture, as in the latter genus, but com- 
pletely calcified, so as to present something of the massiveness 
of the stony corals. The annexed wood-cuts, showing us 
Eschara cervicornis, first A, in its natural size; then B, a few 
cells magnified twenty diameters, and ultimately c, a single 
individual so highly magnified as to reveal some of the details 
of its otherwise invisible structure, give us a good idea of the 
trnly remarkable organisation of the Polyzoa. 
In the Escharee and Flustree the cellular extension of the 
