308 THE Microscope. 
field, quiescent at intervals, up to half past six, when I was com- 
pelled to leave it until the next morning when it was dead. 
The cause of this interesting exit from its home, a voluntary 
exit it seemed, is a mystery to me. The shell was to all appear- 
ance uninjured, and the animal itself appeared in a healthy con- 
dition, yet there might readily have been a disease or a mortal 
uneasiness not apparent to a microscopist who is not practically 
well versed in the pathology of the Rhizopodia. 
Dr. G. C. Wallich reports that he has seen the common Ameaba 
explore the mouth of an old and abandoned shell of a Difflugia, 
much, I suppose, as the hermit crab will examine an apparently 
acceptable sea shell before leaping into it, and he states also that 
the Ameba finally approved of the domicile as a home and, 
entering took possession, thenceforth protruding its pseudopodia, 
and dragging the shell about as if it had been formed by it as 
the original owner. Whether the Amewba in the incident which 
IT have described would ever have returned to the abandoned 
shell, I of course do not know. And that it was an Ameba 
villosa leaving a shell which it had examined and found wanting 
is a suggestion, but scarcely a plausible one. However, it was 
an interesting sight to the observer, and one long to be remem- 
bered. 
EDITORIAL. 
HOSE microscopists who live in the eastern portion of the 
country and are fond of studying microscopic aquatic life, 
have not had a successful nor an entirely pleasant season. It is 
true that the microscope is superior to all seasons and times, but 
the worker who has had the capture of the minute inhabitants 
of the pools and the meadow ditches at heart has not been quite 
happy. The rain it has rained every day, almost. The ponds 
have overflowed their banks and not rarely carried those banks 
with them. The sluggish stream has become as swiftly flowing 
as a mill race. Even the meadow ditches have been full to the 
brim, and he who has set out in search of those quiet places, 
and the still and shady shallows where he has been accustomed 
to find his treasures, has returned empty handed. 
