new Infusoria fro in American Fresh Waters. 109 



Vaginicola ampulla^ sp. nov. (PI. I. fig. 21.) 



Lorica retort-sliaped, erect, about three times as long as 

 broad, widest posteriorly, tapering thence to the rounded 

 point of attachment, and anteriorly to the curved neck-like 

 portion ; aperture obliquely directed, the margins very sliglitly 

 everted, the frontal border truncate ; enclosed animalcule, when 

 fully extended, projecting for about one third of its length 

 beyond the lorica. Length of lorica jljj, inch. 



Hah. Fresh water ; attached to filamentous Algae. 



The lorica is hyaline when young, becoming deep chestnut- 

 brown with age. Very frequently individual loricas were 

 observed with varying proportions of the posterior region 

 coloured and semiopaque, while the frontal portion remained 

 colourless and transparent, others with the entire sheath darkly 

 tinged being almost as numerous. This leads rae to suggest 

 that Vaginicola vestita (tlie IHanicola vestita of De Fromentel), 

 in which the colour is described as being restricted to the pos- 

 terior part of the lorica, may have been diagnosed from an In- 

 fusorian approaching maturity, and consequently beginning to 

 assume its mature coloration. This seems more plausible than 

 Saville Kent's conjectui'c that the sheaths may have been re- 

 paired, or that the animalcule had occupied an old and deserted 

 lorica on which it had built a new frontal addition. 



Balanitozoon *, gen. nov. 



Animalcules free-swimming, ovate or subpyriform, persis- 

 tent in form, not cuirassed, the anterior portion of the cuti- 

 cular surface clothed with vibratile cilia, the posterior region 

 naked; oral aperture apical, without larger adoral cilia; pha- 

 rynx apparent ; a single postero-terminal seta present ; ani- 

 malcules leaping as well as swimming. 



Inhabiting fresh water. 



The ciliation of the anterior one half or two thirds of the 

 cuticular surface, the absence of a series of differentiated oral 

 cilia, and the reduction in the number of the springing hairs 

 to one, and the position of that one on the posterior extremity 

 of the body, exclude this remarkable Infusorian from the 

 Halteriida3 of Claparede and Laclimann. Its ordinal position, 

 the writer supposes, is among the Peritricha, although there is 

 at present no type known in that infusorial order to which it 

 bears a resemblance, the extensive ciliation of the anterior 

 region and the absence of distinct oral cilia being character- 

 istic of Balanitozoon alone. Only a slight effort of the imagi- 



* (iaXaviTiji) shaped like an acorn ; (mov. 



