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Vou. IX. TRENTON, N. J.. SEPTEMBER, 1889. No: 9. 
ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 
THE STATOBLASTS OF OUR FRESH-WATER POLYZOA: 
DR. ALFRED C. STOKES. 
ICROSCOPISTS who devote even a portion of their spare 
time to the collection and investigation of pond life soon 
meet with the Polyzoa and their statoblasts. To the uninformed 
both the statoblasts, or winter eggs, and the mature animals, es- 
pecially those which form great jelly-like masses, or even little 
drops of colorless or pinkish gelatine, are objects of wonder: 
Among those with so little knowledge of natural things that 
they must be classed even lower than the uninformed, these jelly- 
like masses are left to themselves after being called “ spawn,” a 
word popularly describing a multitude of creatures and objects 
which happen to be enclosed within a gelatinous domicile. The 
statoblasts fare better, since they are small, and inconspicuous 
except to the eyes of the microscopist. For the average okserver 
they have no existence, yet I have known the statoblasts of one 
of our common Polyzoa (Pectinatella) to be formed in such pro- 
fusion in the autumn, that the surface of a pond perhaps half an 
acre in extent, was as densely covered with them as the surface 
of the little pools along the rail-road is sometimes covered with 
cinder scales. 
