250 THE MICROSCOPICAL NEWS, 
indulgence my rambling talk. I admit and explicitly state, some 
of the hints given, for as such I wish to have them considered, are 
almost entirely based upon clinical observation, and some of them 
are as yet insufficiently supported by such absolute proof as is 
required in scientific research. But if the same give an impulse, 
or point out the direction in which experiments and further research 
may lead to important results, I shall not regret that I yielded, un- 
prepared as I am, to your request.—/ournal of the American 
Society of Microscopists. 
POND LIFE IN WINTER. 
OTICING some observations on the above subject, and being 
myself for many years an ardent ‘pond man,” I will, with your 
kind permission, give an instance or two of my success in this little 
worked-out line of biology (especially in America) as regards pond 
hunting in the winter months. As far as my records go I have 
found very little difference. I am generally- as successful on a 
winter’s day as in the summer time, for in the hot weather you may 
go to pool after pool, ditch after ditch, and find nothing but thin 
mud perhaps, the result of continued drought. Then only fairly 
large lakes or reservoirs can be of any service, and these are 
generally very low and muddy round the borders and require some 
care, or else up to your knees you go unless you have a good drag 
to send across. Last winter I thought to venture out for some 
material for study, and I visited a large reservoir not many miles 
from Birmingham. The ice was very thin on account of a slight 
current. I dragged that pool, and that one haul sufficed to keep 
me fully employed for a month or more. I will briefly state what 
I found in that one haul on the weeds, Axacharis and Myrio- 
phyllum. 
1st. That beautiful compound creature Dendrosoma radians ; 
there were many, very many, large colony stocks. I saw several 
much larger than the one figured in Saville Kent’s Manual, with 
the ciliated embryos tolerably plentiful in the water swimming 
about. I took a fine gathering at the time to Mr. T. Bolton. 
Also Zrichophrys epistylides, Podophrys cyclopeum, Acneta grandis, 
a new species, 4. mystacina, A. cemmuarum, Raphidiophrys elegans, 
R. pallida Schultze, Actinophrys sol and Lichhornit, Stichotricha 
remex, Arcella vulgaris, dentata, aculeata, Ameba villosa; also 
Stephanoceros Lichhornit, very plentiful and very large; Aelicerta 
ringens, Cephalosiphon limnias, Limnias ceratophylli, Vaginicola, 
Qcistes, Cothurnia, Lpistylis digitalis, Opercularia, Floscularia 
