Brit MICROSCOPE. 
Vou. VI. ANN ARBOR, JUNE, 1886. No. 6. 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
A FOOD-HABIT OF A CHILODON. 
DR. ALFRED C. STOKES. 
N a sloping meadow near the writer’s home a little spring 
bubbles and boils and tosses aloft a miniature sand cloud, 
and the water trickles from the shallow basin a quite rapid 
stream through the grass to lose itself in a large creek. The 
current is so rapid that, although the little bays and indenta- 
tions along the margins are choked with masses of Vaucheria 
and filamentous floating Algee, I had supposed it to be hardly 
adapted to infusorial life, and consequently never examined it, 
with infusoria as the object, until recently. I then obtained 
in considerable abundance a creature whose method of taking 
its favorite food is so curious and, indeed, so admirable an 
adaptation of means to ends, that it seems to merit a short 
paper to itself. 
The infusorian is an undescribed species of Chilodon, a 
member of that order in which the locomotive cilia are confined 
to the lower surface, the oral aperture opening on the same part 
at a considerable distance back of the frontal margin. The 
animalcule is shown enlarged in figure 1, @ being the position of 
the mouth. The latter is followed internally by a very peculiar 
obconical pharynx formed of delicate but rigid rods. A much 
enlarged diagram of this structure is represented in figure 2. 
It is a kind of cage or basket open at both ends, the longitudi- 
nally disposed rods being attached to the creature’s body only 
at their external or oral extremity, the distal or internal ends 
being entirely free within the endoflasm, the animalcule hav- 
ing the power to slightly expand this deepest portion of the 
pharynx. Judging from the infusorian’s actions under certain 
