82 : 
same stuff, and probably feeding on the succulent rootlets of 
the mosses, were several, at first contracted and sluggish, but 
soon merrily wheeling rotifers, with some anguilluloid Nema- 
totdea, and many other undescribed inhabitants of the micro- 
scopical ocean. A uberous field, a very rich mine indeed, 
this new underground searching, worth working by all 
means ! 
It is not for me to give here a strict account of all I have 
discovered this way. This I may be able perhaps to do 
another time. Suffice now to call your earnest attention to 
that “ startling novelty ” (as Dr. Fripp, who has so thought- 
fully and wisely commented upon this subject, likes to call 
it, which the Privatdocent of Bonn has more than sufficiently 
described and wonderfully sketched. 
What I wish now particularly to tell you is, that the same, 
or, after all, a very similar form of the would-be A. terricola 
has been, and is yet easily to be found in the very water we 
use to drink. The 15th of this month (Noy.) I tried, for the 
first time, a somewhat troubled residuum of water, that was 
at the bottom of a jug-ewer, which had previously been filled 
with that common water-supply that issues from the water- 
works at Stoke Newington. Nothing was there appearing at 
first except a few straggling infusoria, and heaps of all sort 
of dust; all around it looked still dead and motionless; but, 
after a while, some flaky lumps of sarcode (they generally 
stick upon shreddings of dust, or decayed fragments of vege- 
table or animal organisins, and are thus overlooked) began to 
move on, slowly, and to change shape and place by degrees ; 
then, rousing their inmost energy, the lazy creatures com- 
menced to unfold fan-like, snowy white sheets, and glide 
along, skimming the thin film of water which, to their tiny 
rafts, is what the expanse of a lake, or of a sea, would be to 
a sailing vessel. 
With a good }-objective, accurately focussed, you might 
easily have seen the endosare carrying in its flowing currents 
several many-coloured granules (where the garnet-reddish 
and yellowish ones come from I am puzzled to tell, though I 
suspect some may perhaps come from decomposed chitinous 
substance, such as may easily be the case with the elytre 
of dead coleoptera). Carried by the same stream, you might 
have seen here and there an oval roundish body of a slightly 
bluish colour (encompassed, as some believe it to be, by a 
transparent capsule ; it appears sometimes as if surrounded 
by a brilliant red-looking ring, which I suspect is only a mis- 
chievous, however pleasing, play of light). This is the 
nucleus, that all-important germinal portion which goes to 
