220 



LAKES AND RIVERS, 



CHAPTER IX. 



SIX MONTHS OF BROOK AND POND LIFE IN SUSSEX. 



THERE is not a month of the year which does not 

 yield to the observer of nature ample material. Even 

 in the month of January, when frost so 

 generally binds the soil, the pulses 

 of vegetable life beat languidly, the 

 insects that are in a mature state shrink 

 into the smallest and warmest corners, 

 and the dormouse and the lizard sleep, 

 yet if the naturalist has vigour to walk 

 abroad he will learn not merely from 

 what he does find, but from what he 

 finds not. With these thoughts in my 

 mind on a January morning, I visited 

 the brooks in the southern district of 

 Lewes ; and collecting with a stick 

 some green mossy conferva from the 

 surface, I found on examining it under 

 the microscope and comparing it with 

 engravings to be the spiral conferva, 

 Spyrogyra quinina. A series of fine 

 hairs, resembling spun glass, were 

 divided into cylindrical cells of an 

 emerald green colour. Attached to 

 these confervse were the bellflower 

 (A Rotifer.) animalcules Vorticellcz; beautiful trans- 

 parent bells most lively in motion. The Rotifer 

 vulgaris accompanied them ; this is a much more 



