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mole-cricket or a particular garden-mollusc (Testacella) seems 
mostly to enjoy its life when it is buried underground; from 
which odd manner of living the German doctor, Richard 
Greef, who claims to have first brought it to light from 
its earthly grave, thought himself entitled to name it A. 
terricola. Were we allowed, not indeed to coin a new word, 
but simply to make use of a rather old one, we should call it 
in English, the land or ground oar. 
The ground it chooses in preference to live in, and where 
one is pretty sure to find it at home, is that covered with 
deep green prothallium—a confervoid expansion, consisting of 
newly-formed cellular structure of either mosses or lichens, 
commonly found along damp banks. Garden walks, too, 
where they are left alone for a short time, have such green 
patches, ordinarily made up of Microcoleus repens, Harvey, 
or of that blackish phormidium, which is only a first stage 
of the beautiful Oscilatoria autumnalis, Ag. 
Now, having chosen one of these dark spots in Victoria 
Park, for sake of experiment, I found, besides several other 
curiosities, what Dr. Greef would probably have styled a 
new Land Ameba; but I must confess that it was no 
novelty to me; nay, a rather old acquaintance, which I had 
met some years since in Leicestershire; easily obtained by 
simply straining a few branches of Anacharis alsinastrum, 
that were there floating on the surface of a pond.—The 
rather rare Ochlochete hystriz, was abundantly growing 
epiphytically on its leaves—It was on this occasion that I 
got acquainted with the problematic Corycia of Dujardin, a 
genus which from that time I study con amore, believing that 
it will soon be admitted to a special rank distinct from other 
amceboid rhizopods, and form, as Claparéde has foretold, 
“un genre a part,” to which Greef’s A. terricola, with Auer- 
bach’s A. delimbosa, and others, that may still be discovered 
of this kind, will probably be referred. 
For those who have not yet acquired the practical knack 
of managing, comme id faut, such uncouth matter as is 
that which is surrounded, I have said, with Prothallium, 
or Oscillaria, I would suggest to try, asI did, at first a 
single green tuft of tree-moss or wall-moss. Whilst musing 
some time ago in Highbury Park, the fancy came to pluck 
out of a wall there a pinchfull of mixed-up silver and screw- 
moss (Bryum argenteum, et Barbula murals). This I steeped 
in water, when I came home; and I had soon the satisfaction 
to see, out of that stuff, a cloudy ameeboid form, much like 
Greef’s A. terricola (fig. 1), im ruhenden und contrahirten 
Zustande. Nor was it there alone; but concealed within the 
VOL, XI,—NEW SER. F 
